LOCATION: (lat. 28°13'20.85" N., long. 82°43'29.55" W.)
The sink is located adjacent to the Mittye P. Locke Elementary school in the Spring lake subdivision, New Port Richey, FL. From US 19N, turn East on Trouble Creek Rd and travel approx 1.2 mi to Shoreline Dr. (the entrance of the subdivison) on the South side of the road. The sink is surrounded by houses on three sides, so once on Shorline, bear left and follow it around to Portola, turn right, go to Gulfshore Ct and make another right. This will bring you up to a dead end at the Civic Association Clubhouse where the sink can be viewed across the fence.
DESCRIPTION:
This is one of the largest sinkholes in the area, and being only a mile or so inland, I always had very high hopes that it was a major drainage conduit to some submerged sinks in the Sawyers Basin area to the West. What a dive that would be, a 1.8 mile traverse to open water. While my theory may be correct, the drainage obviously quit taking place many years ago. Both Spring Lake Sink and the coastal sinks are completely clogged with decaying organics and have a lot of hydrogen sulfide that keeps things looking prettty dead at the bottom. Max depth is around 30' and water temp is much colder at the bottom due to lack of sunlight from sulfide layer.
DIVELOG: (Special thanks to "Rich" for sharing these log entries from May 98')
Dive #1 - Ancient sink surrounded by heavily treed private lots. Very "Virgin" dive made possilble by "Mike" meeting the best landowner. First descent to 12' and lost all dive buddies, On surface Mike called his dive so John and I continued. Second descent met with swinmming into a submerged tree! We surfaced and floated more toward the middle and descended face first and crashed into deep mung floor at 30 ft. Searched floor using cave swim attitude at about 4-6 inches off the floor. Only mung floor, no plant or animal life. Hydrogen sulfide layer at 6" above floor!
Dive #2 - Finned towards SW part of lake and headed down again, headfirst, hand in hand until we crashed intoteh mung floor. Swam hand in had with head down, fins up with head between floor and mild hydrogen sulfide layer. Searched floor and found mung, no plants, no animals, few branches and one plastic boat oar. Called dive after swimming into South bank.
Aerial View Of Spring Lake Relative to Sawyers Basin
