Jamaican Caving Notes

Crayfish Cave

April 2, 2005 - 9:00-9:30 EST

District: Rock Spring

Parish: Trelawny

WGS84 L/L: 18 18 31.5; 77 34 10.4

JAD69: 189675 E, 183977 N

JAD2001: 689786 E, 684266 N

Altitude: 490m WGS84

Accuracy: +/- 10m horizontal; +/- 15m vertical

Type: Sumped sink

Accessibility: Dive

Depth: 0

Length: 6m

Explorers: KHE - 1965

Survey: KHE - 1965

JU Ref: Text - pg 135; Map - pg 136

Entrance size: 2m W x 1m H

Entrance aspect: 140 deg true

Vegetation in general locale: Farm, scrub

Vegetation at entrance: Scrub

Rock type: Yellow - White limestone junction

Bedding: Moderate

Jointing: Undetermined

Speleothems: Undetermined

Palaeo resources: Undetermined

Archaeo resources: None

Hydrology: Wet

Siltation: Moderate

Sink: Active

Rising: Undetermined

Stream passage with surface activity: Flooded

Stream passage without surface activity: N/A

Dark zone: >90%.

Climate: Cool, humid.

Bats: None

Bat guano: N/A

Guano mining: N/A

Guano condition: N/A

Eleutherodactylus cundalli: Some

Neoditomyia farri: None

Amblypygids: None

Periplaneta americana: None

Cave crickets: None

Sesarma: Undetermined

Other species: No trogs. This is a short passage that is flooded in much of it. We could not get into to it to look, but it is likely that stygobites are present, crabs, Sesarma spp, as they are found in most of the other stream passages in the district, and the name Crayfish suggests that shrimp were observed here by the KHE.

Visitation: None

Speleothem damage: None

Graffiti: None

Garbage: Undetermined

Ownership: Private

Protection: None

Vulnerability: Medium. The sink is found at the end of a stream that rises at Pool Cave, and has an aboveground course of 100 metres. Siltation is a problem because of farming in the district..

Crayfish Cave

April 2, 2005

Team: Stewart, Roggy

Notes: RS Stewart

This site was found by Stewart and Roggy just before we located Pool Cave. We had been traversing crossways to the streambed that we knew to exist between the two, to use this to locate both targets, and we happened to first hit it at the downstream end, the sink of Crayfish Cave.

A currently muddy pit (pulse event from Hurricane Ivan appears to have silted in a number of the sinks in the district) takes water from the end of a short stream that rises at the north entrance of Pool Cave. Although the KHE managed to get in here a few metres, and then dive a short sump to reach several more metres of passage with air-space, we were not able to penetrate this sink at all when we found it due to mud (although it allowed water to flow through it in several holes). The land immediately around the sink is overgrown scrub pasture, and has poor cover. We found Pool Cave to be fairly silt-free, for reasons described in those notes, so it does not seem to be the main source of the mud. Most of what is entering Crayfish Cave comes from the land on either side of the streambed downstream of the Pool Cave rising.

The name of this cave is interesting, because "Crayfish" is Jamaican for river-shrimps. Apparently, either the KHE found them here, or the people of the district had seen them in the pool at the entrance sink. We looked for shrimps during our time in the river caves of Rock Spring, but didn't see any. Part of the problem was that other than Mouth Maze, we were usually in stream-passages that had no dry floor - we were constantly wading/swimming and stirring up sediment, so there was no chance of seeing them. We had no choice in this, because there were so many caves to cover in the relatively short time that funding allowed - we could not spend hours standing around in any one cave. This was recognized in our planning for the proposal, and we had thusly limited our activities to gathering as much information as quickly as we could, with a focus on indicators such as bats, guano, roaches, N. farri, siltation, etc, and positions that would enable researchers to easily find sites that might be of interest to them, as suggested by the indicators.

From Crayfish Cave, we followed the streambed upstream to find it rising from an entrance to a passage that resembled what we should expect for Pool Cave. After wading through this passage to the south, and finding it to match the KHE map, along with the entrance at the south end where we came out, we were sure that we had both Crayfish and Pool Caves. In the course of it, GPS georeferencing was done for the three entrances, and it will be a lot easier for others to find these sites in the future than it was for Dietrich and I (much tramping around in the bush with a machete).

Crayfish Cave

April 2, 2005

Notes: DK Roggy

This cave stood within a small glade of cultivation, at the north end of a dry streambed.  It had an entrance of perhaps 1m x 1m.  Stefan looked into it while I followed the streambed to the south, until I reached Pool Cave.