By Bruce Ritchie
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
After 17 years of searching, divers have found a cave passageway between Wakulla Springs and Leon Sinks.
<img src="http://www.halcyon.net/images/halcyon/wkpp_120499_28.jpg" align="left">Divers with the Woodville Karst Plain Project made the discovery during four hours of exploration on Saturday. The seven-mile link between Turner Sink and Wakulla Springs creates a combined cave system totalling 28 miles in length.
"This is a tremendous accomplishment for the WKPP and for underwater cave exploration," Casey McKinlay, one of the divers, wrote this morning in an e-mail to the Democrat. "We expect to have a formal name for the combined cave system shortly."
McKinlay and diver Jarrod Jablonski entered the cave system at 10 a.m. on Saturday.
They explored 1,220 feet of new passageway before discovering exploration line laid in the past coming the other way from Wakulla Springs.
The divers emerged from Turner Sink at 1 a.m. Sunday after 10 hours of decompression.
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