For as yet unexplained reasons, scientists have been finding isolated colonies of little brown bats — once the most common bat species in the region and the hardest hit by white nose syndrome — surviving and healthy.

Hope for North America’s bats: For as yet unexplained reasons, scientists have been finding isolated colonies of little brown bats — once the most common bat species in the region and the hardest hit by white nose syndrome — surviving and healthy.

In Vermont, biologists have identified 15 colonies in the western part of the state where the numbers of little brown bats, while still far fewer than before white nose appeared, are surviving, said Vermont Fish and Wildlife Biologist Scott Darling. “We visited each and every one of those colonies and to some degree, much to our surprise, they seem to be healthy,” Darling said. “It begged the question, ‘Why are you the lucky ones?'”

Caving in Druid Cave, Cheat Canyon, West Virginia

An evening pause: Caving in Druid Cave, Cheat Canyon, West Virginia. The caver is David Riggs. The videographer is caver Aaron Bird. The caver who arrives at the end with the ATV is caver Brian Masney. All are world class cavers, with whom I’ve had the honor of caving.

The video is nicely done, and gives an excellent and accurate feel for modern cave exploration and techniques. Watch especially how the rigging allows David to climb past the waterfall while on rope and hardly get wet.

Exploring the floor of Copernicus

thumbnail of index of caves on floor of Copernicus

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter website recently announced a new way to tour the Moon. The website, called QuickMap, allows a user with any home computer to zoom into any spot on the lunar surface and see the high resolution images being taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Using QuickMap, I spent a few hours this past weekend strolling about on the northern half of the floor of the crater Copernicus. It is in this area, annotated in the image on the right, that NASA engineer James Fincannon has already located a slew of collapse features and possible caves, the images of which I have posted previously on behindtheblack. (Click on the image or here to see a larger version of this updated index map.)

(You also can go sightseeing there if you wish. Go to QuickMap and zoom in on 10.1 latitude and -20.1 longitude to get to the floor of Copernicus. Or pick your own spot on the lunar surface and do some of your own exploring!)

What I found in the northern half of Copernicus’s floor was a plethora of possible caves and collapse features. Literally, the crater floor is littered with what appear to be pits, fissures, rills, and sinks. More significantly, sometimes the cave entrances line up with long straight collapse features, suggesting strongly the existence of extensive underground passages beyond the initial entrance pits.
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The caves of Copernicus
and the Ocean of Storms

The discovery of new caves on the Moon keep coming. Today I have two new stories. The first is a discovery by professional scientists of a giant lava tube cave in the Oceanus Procellarum or Ocean of Storms. The second is the detection of a plethora of caves and sinks on the floor of the crater Copernicus, found by a NASA engineer who likes to explore the gobs of data being accumulated by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and made available to all on the web.

The image below of the Moon’s near side, taken by India’s Cartosat-2A satellite and taken from the science paper, shows the location of lava tube in Oceanus Procellarum (indicated by the red dot) and the crater Copernicus.

The Moon's near side, annotated

First the professional discovery. Yesterday, the Times of India reported the discovery of lava tube more than a mile long on the Moon. I did not post a link to the article because I didn’t think the news story provided enough information to make it worth passing along. Today however, fellow caver Mark Minton emailed me the link where the actual research paper could be downloaded [pdf]. This I find definitely worth describing.
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White nose found in North Caroina

The fungus that has been killing cave hibernating bats throughout the eastern United States has now been found in North Carolina.

In a related note, the National Speleological Society has sent a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, expressing its concern over what many cavers believe has been the government’s indiscriminate cave closure policies in response to the white nose fungus. Key quote:

Our members have been extremely patient and collaborative throughout the entire [white nose syndrome] situation, but the frustration and discontent has been growing. We are hearing more and more from across the country that cavers do not want to participate in collaborative efforts – in much part due to management decisions by federal and state agencies that are perceived by knowledgeable and conservation-minded cavers to be over-reactive, based on sometimes slim science, speculation and political pressure, and insensitive to broader science and conservation issues. That result would not be beneficial to anyone.

The underground Moon

More images of lunar cave pits have been posted by the scientists of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). They have also published their first paper [pdf] about these cave pits for the 2011 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference taking place in March. The paper summarizes, with images, what is know about the three pits on the Moon that have each been imaged a number of times at different angles and lighting situations.

Mare Tranquilitatus
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Bat fungus more deadly that first thought

Bat researchers have concluded that the fungus seen on the dying bats in the northeast United States these past four years is far more deadly than any fungus previously studied, and is increasingly believed to be the primary cause of the bat deaths. Key quote:

“This fungus is amazingly destructive — it digests, erodes, and invades the skin — particularly the wings — of hibernating bats,” said Meteyer. “The ability of this fungus to invade bats’ wing skin is unlike that of any known skin fungal pathogen in land mammals.”

Looking into a lunar cave

NASA engineer James Fincannon emailed me the image below, cropped from this Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter scan. It shows a side view of the same lunar pit previously discussed by me in July (here and here).

This image below was almost certainly ordered up by LRO scientists after seeing the images above so that they could get a look at the pit’s walls. I have further cropped it and blown it up so we can get a really good look too! See the second image below.

In this side view, we are looking across the top of the pit at the far wall and floor. On that far wall you can see what look like three coarse horizontal layers, below which is a deeply shadowed floor layer that is probably either cave passage or a significant overhang. Further processing will probably be bring out some further details and hopefully answer this question.

In a previous post, I had noted that this wall is probably about 200 feet deep. This new image thus gives any experienced rock-climber or caver a very nice sense of what a rappel down the side of that pit would be like. To me, it reminds me of some of the open-air cave pits I’ve rappelled into in New Mexico.

Update: I should note that that overhang/cave entrance at the bottom of the pit is probably at least 30 feet high. An impressive entrance, indeed.

Also, lunar scientist Paul Spudis emailed me with these comments:

[The pit] is very similar to some tube systems that I have studied in Hawaii. The wall units are exposed lava flows. They are probably all from the event which made this flow — a single flow can be made up of multiple flow units, hence, the apparent “layering.”

Of course, getting into an open pit and then moving through open void lava tubes that radiate from it are two different things. In terrestrial tube systems, many tubes are open and accessible but sometimes they are not. They can be blocked up by frozen lava or rubble from adjacent tube collapse.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to know what the situation on the Moon is until we get there. However, I must say, this particular area looks very promising.

Side view of pit

closeup

More caves on Mars

And damn, do I want to rappel into them!

This week’s release of images from the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter included these spectacular photos of two deep pits, approximately 180 and 310 meters in diameter and located aligned with a series of depressions that suggest additional passages at their base.

The first image shows the pits in the context of the surrounding terrain. From the caption:

These pits are aligned with what appears to be larger, degraded depressions. The wispy deposit may consist of dark material that has been either blown out of the pits or from some other source and scattered about by the local winds.

wide shot of pits

The next two images are heavily processed close-ups of each pit in order to bring out the detail within. From the caption:

The eastern most and smaller of the two pits contains boulders and sediment along its walls and brighter aeolian dune sediments on its floor. The larger, western most pit contains sediment and boulders with faint dune-like patterns visible on the deepest part of the floor. Both pits have steep eastern walls and more gently sloped western walls that transition gradually into the pit floor. Steep resistant ledges containing boulders that overhang and obscure the pit floors form the eastern walls.

The smaller pit, with dunes on floor

The larger pit

Sinkholes on Mars

Caver alert! Releases this week from both the Mars Express orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a variety of sinkholes and collapse features on Mars, which in turn suggest the possibility of underground passages.

First, there is this picture from Mars Express, showing the area called Phoenicis Lacus (Latin for Phoenix Lake).

Phoenicis Lacus

The large and long canyon in box 1 is actually a collapse feature, almost two miles deep and formed as this region was stretched, warped, and cracked by the powerful volcanic activity of the nearby giant volcanoes of the Tharsis plateau, including Olympus Mons, the solar system’s largest volcano. You can also see how this activity causes several sinkholes and craters in all three boxes to become elongated and distorted.

In places where the surface is deformed in this way on Earth, you often find tectonic caves, underground cracks produced as the ground is pulled apart. The large collapse feature suggests the possibility that there are voids below it.

Then there is this subimage from this release of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing the central peak and southern slope of an old crater in the Terra Sirenum region of the Martian southern hemisphere.

central crater peak

Down that south slope can be seen what look like fluvial-like flows. In the center of these flows as well as near the top of the peak are what appear to be a string of collapse features. Below is the close-up as indicated by the box above:

inset closeup of sinkholes

From the caption: “It is possible that these pits are evidence of subsurface piping or hydrothermal activity. Piping occurs when subsurface water flows through soil, takes some soil with it, and causes the overlying ground to collapse. These fluvial-like features and the connected pits may have formed during a late stage of crater formation when temperatures were suitable for liquid water.”

On Earth, this is one of the geological processes that forms sinkholes on the surface as well as caves underground. When cavers go out to look or dig for new caves, we often head for just this kind of string of sinkholes, as they are excellent evidence that an unentered cave lies hidden below, ripe for exploration.

Closing caves for the convenience and power of the government

A variety of federal government agencies are moving aggressively to shut down human access to all American caves, including those on private property. Key quote:

In Wisconsin, where white nose syndrome has not yet appeared, wildlife managers want to get a jump on the disease by declaring G. destructans [the fungus associated with the syndrome] an invasive species, and declaring four species of bats threatened. Those designations would give wildlife agencies access to new sources of funds. They would also “give police power to the agencies to go onto private land to prevent damage to these newly named threatened species,” said [Peter] Youngbaer, [white nose syndrome liaison for the National Speleological Society]. “We fear that private landowners will be fearful of allowing even inadvertent access to caves, and thus move to seal caves shut. They’ll be causing more damage to the bats that they’re ostensibly trying to protect.” [emphasis mine]

As a caver, I not only have a strong personal interest in this story, I know a lot about bats and caves from personal experience. As a science writer who has also written about white nose syndrome for Science, I am also very familiar with the present state of the science. Based on this background, I find the actions of these government officials unconscionable. As one commenter to this article very correctly noted:

“There is currently *no* evidence that humans have spread this disease, but mountains of evidence for bat-to-bat transmission. The possibility does exist that humans *could* spread it, but even at its worst a human vector would be quite statistically insignificant in comparison to the bat-to-bat transmission.

In other words, closing all caves to human access can accomplish no good, and a great deal of harm. Yet, this is exactly what these government officials and environmental bureaucrats wish to do.

Back in March 2008, soon after white nose syndrome was discovered, I wrote the following:

I am beginning to believe strongly that the situation has worrisome political overtones linked to the unstated desire of some people to limit access to caves. . . . Some people are distorting the situation for their own purposes, either consciously or unconsciously. . . . Some of those people might have an agenda (closing caves to cavers) that is entirely irrelevant to the issue of white nose.

The article above only serves to confirm my opinions from 2008. The government officials who are demanding the indiscriminate closure of caves and the unfettered control over caves on private property are not really interested in protecting or saving the bats. In fact, their actions might actually do great harm to the bats, as the closures, the regulatory restrictions, and the threat to private property will antagonize both cavers and landowners, thus guaranteeing their unwillingness to cooperate with scientists.

So what do these government officials want? As far as I can tell, what they really want is power. And they are using white nose syndrome as a hammer to gain it.

Sadly, I fear that they are going to succeed. Today’s environmental laws are rigged to their advantage. The press is generally on their side. And the opposition to this power grab is diffuse and weak.

Once again, we see the death of freedom. And it dies, not by a single devastating blow, but by the death of a thousand cuts.

More caves on the Moon

Check out these newly posted images of lunar cave pits, taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The depth estimates range from 100 to 300 plus feet.

[Ed. I should note that some of these images have already been posted on behindtheblack. For example, the center image found here) was first discovered by reader James Fincannon and posted by me on July 15 and July 26, when I discussed the challenges of accessing the bottom of these pits. I also posted an image of the Mare Ingenii pit on July 13.]

How blind cave fish find food

How blind cave fish find food. Key quote:

“Vibration Attraction Behavior” (or VAB) is the ability of fish to swim toward the source of a water disturbance in darkness. Postdoctoral associate Masato Yoshizawa measured this behavioral response in both wild caught and laboratory raised cave and surface-dwelling fish using a vibrating rod at different frequencies as a stimulus. Most cavefish displayed VAB and would swim toward the vibrating rod and poke at it, while few surface fish did.

John Wilcox dies

Updated and bumped: John’s obituary can now be read here.

John Wilcox, the man most responsible for finding the connection between Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave and the Flint Ridge Cave system and thereby producing the world’s longest cave system, died today after a three week long illness. To quote Roger Brucker, co-author of The Longest Cave, Wilcox “was known for his systematic approach to exploration and laser-like focus on detailed mapping.” R.I.P.

Natural Bridge, on the Moon

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has released another lunar cave image, this time showing a double pit entrance with a natural bridge between them. [Thanks to reader James Fincannon for the tip.]

Natural bridge

From the caption: “The bridge is approximately 7 meters wide on top and perhaps 9 meters on the bottom side, and is a 20 meter walk for an astronaut to cross from one side to the other.”

Single Rope Techinque — on the Moon

James Fincannon of NASA took the two images of the Marius Hills lunar pit taken at different times by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (which I posted here) and did an overlay so that the shadow produced by pit’s rim could be easily compared with the rim itself (see below). He then did some calculations based on the sun’s angle of light shining into the cave and came up with the following calculations:

I estimate it is 60 meters from rim to bottom. The floor is flat below the surface. The rocks on the flat surface below ground are in stark relief (hard shadows) compared to above ground due to the sun coming only at one angle while above ground the albedo/reflections makes for soft shadows at this high sun angle (65 deg elevation). I cannot tell if the black portion of the combo image is a slope or more flat floor. Need a different high sun angle or azimuth to fill that in. Still I like the general pattern of the rim matching the shadow on the floor, although the image I found originally has that edge of the cave rim in shadow for a large extent.

overlay of Marius Hill cave

A 60 meter drop is about 200 feet deep. This result is reasonably close to the depth estimated by Japanese scientists, 88 meters or 288 feet, based on images of the same lunar pit taken by their Kaguya probe.

Knowing the approximate depth of the entrance pit raises the much more important question: How will future lunar explorers to get to the bottom of this pit? It is ironic » Read more

Exploring virgin cave passage

As I mentioned previously, last weekend I was in West Virginia exploring and surveying some newly discovered cave passages. These pictures, taken by Nikki Fox, will give you a flavor of what it is like to visit a place never before seen by human eyes.

Bob surveying

Here I am, trying to sketch the final section of a clean, generally dry flowstone and bedrock passage. Trust me, it isn’t easy drawing a place that your body almost fills.

The lead where this virgin passage began had been known for decades, but had never been entered because » Read more

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