Hranicka Propast the deepest flooded cave in the world! - video

Last Tuesday, 27 September, what many people had been waiting and hoping for for a long time happened. The Hranice Propast cave in the Czech Republic became the deepest flooded cave in the world!

Exploration using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) has established the depth of the Czech cave at 404 metres! This is 12 metres more than the previous record holder, the Italian Pozzo del Merro cave.

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This result is an unquestionable success and something that the Polish (and not only) diving community has been waiting for for a long time. Over the past few seasons we have reported on the progress of the Polish-Czech diving team, who did their best to reach the bottom of the cave.

Of course, the project would not have gained such publicity in our country if it were not for our compatriots who contributed to the achieved result. Apart from Krzysztof Starnawski, we should also mention Bartłomiej Grynda from GRALmarine – the constructor of the ROV vehicle, which reached the bottom of the Hranicka Propasta, and Marcin Jamkowski responsible for the photographic documentation, among others.

It all started in 1999, when Krzysztof Starnawski came to Hranicka for the first time. The structure of the cave indicated that it could go extremely deep, and as you can see, this premonition was confirmed. However, between the first dive and the final determination of the depth, many noteworthy steps took place.

In 2014, Starnawski reached a depth of 200 metres and at first took this as the final bottom of the cave. However, it turned out that this was not the end of this extraordinary journey into the depths of Hranicka Propasta and the cave has a clamp behind which further metres and its actual extremely remote bottom await.

Optimism was sparked by a sounding where, at a depth of 384 metres, the line ran out. The record-breaking Pozzo del Marre was barely 8 metres away and in such a situation it was hard not to hope for a record result. However, the road was not easy.

Fortunately, hard work and subsequent approaches resulted in a dive to a depth of 265 m in 2015. The bottom sounding carried out at that time showed a depth of 370 m, which was probably the result of encountering elements that had fallen into the depths of the cave during the widening of the clamp.

The year 2016 finally brought the long-awaited solution to the mystery surrounding the actual depth of Hranicka Propast. Today, the team exploring the Czech cave can proudly say that they have succeeded! With a bottom depth of 404 metres, Hranicka became the deepest known flooded cave in the world!

^{Photo: Marcin Jamkowski}