In film footage released Monday, video shows a diver swimming along towering limestone walls while hauling an expanse of equipment and safety gear.

A flashlight illuminates some of the deepest depths recorded at the Roaring River cave in Cassville, where past dive teams were limited to traditional scuba equipment and only descended a little more than 200 feet, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

Those records were shattered this year, and there's still more cave to explore.

The KISS Rebreathers dive team — the acronym stands for Keep It Super Simple — made it to 344 feet during their dive in September, Lead Exploratory Diver Mike Young said in the video clip.

"We had dropped a drop weight down, and it is sitting at 365 feet," Young, of Fort Smith, stated. "I can see it easily, plus I can see another 20 to 30 feet past that and it's still dropping down."

In a phone interview with the News-Leader, Young said the team made it past the restriction earlier this summer.

"Every place is different, and you never know what you're going to encounter," Young said. "That makes the exploration process longer and drawn out, and that's why it's taking us months and months to do because we go in, we explore a little, we see what we encounter and we come back out and we make a plan for how we can go a little farther next time."

During the dive in September, the group found a massive room next to the restriction.

"We expected to be in a smaller tunnel because we had to go through such a tight restriction," Young said. "We're weren't anticipating finding such an enormous room back there."

The restriction is about 230 feet below the surface, or equivalent to a 23-story building, Young said. Rocks have collected near an opening where water flows, and the rocks haven't eroded as much as the surrounding cave.

"When the water is low enough, then we can push against the water pressure to get through that restriction," Young said.

This exploration project is a continuation of Young's life-long dreams. As a student in grade school asked to draw a picture of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Young recounted "my little guy was a diver." He's been able to fulfill those dreams since he started diving in the late 90s.

There isn't an end date in sight to this latest exploration — as long as permits continue to be approved — but one goal is to create a documentary along with a short video that can be used by the Roaring River State Park at the visitor center, Young said. This isn't his first gig with documentary work either. Young assisted in completing IMAX's "Fantastic Caves" film with footage from Devil's Hole in Nevada.

From the underwater photographer's view
Chief Underwater Photographer Randall Purdy hauls his Sony camera with him when he dives with the KISS Rebreathers.

To withstand the pressure, he protects his camera body using aluminum housing. Once outfitted with a big lens and lights, the camera weighs about 35 pounds.

In the water, the camera feels about two ounces.

The "absolutely massive" cave opens deeper past the restriction, and the Kearney, Nebraska, resident told the News-Leader in a phone interview the video is just a glimpse.

"What we want people to understand is when we're doing stuff like this (that's), so we're taking every precaution possible," Purdy said.

There's no less than 15 additional scuba tanks staged along the cave system, "just in case one of us has a problem," Purdy said. There are also other safety divers who check to make sure the trio are reaching the checkpoints in the planned timeframe.

The team is also running a guideline the entire dive. Not only does it help cartographer Jon Lillestolen with mapping, it can help the group return to the surface if their lights failed.

As stated in the dive team's name, Purdy said they are using rebreathers, which allows for deeper explorations. Unlike the teams diving in 1979 and 1999 at the Roaring River spring, rebreathers bring more freedom to exploring.

"Instead of every time you exhale and you see bubbles like what you see on the movies with scuba in it, a rebreather actually captures all of that gas, runs it through a chemical absorbent that absorbs the CO2 and then we add oxygen back in," Purdy explained.

"We have thousands of hours on rebreathers and very few failures ever, but we still plan for them because they can be catastrophic," he continued.

Being in the water is "second nature" for the divers, and they got to see a few water creatures while in the spring as well. With common fish and crayfish, Purdy said they also found a "cave adapted critter," and it appeared completely transparent. For their next dive, Purdy said DNR will hopefully approve their permits and collecting samples.

Watch Roaring River State Park's Facebook page for updates.

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