''Speleonaut'' (named from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

words for "cave" and "sailor") is the

submersible A submersible is an underwater vehicle which needs to be transported and supported by a larger ship, watercraft or dock, platform. This distinguishes submersibles from submarines, which are self-supporting and capable of prolonged independent ope ...

used by the cave diver

Jochen Hasenmayer Jochen Hasenmayer (born 28 October 1941 in Pforzheim, Germany) is a German speleologist and cave diver from Birkenfeld in Baden-Württemberg, whose spectacular dives have frequently made headlines. Cave diving Hasenmayer began his cave diving ...

. After the 1989 decompression accident that left his legs paralyzed, Hasenmayer designed the ''Speleonaut'' with his friend Konrad Gehringer in order to continue exploring the

Blauhöhle The Blauhöhle is the largest known cave system in the Swabian Alps in southern Germany. The Blauhöhle presumably originated in a time when the Danube still flowed through the Blau valley. Since the shifting of the Danube, several small rivers ...

cave system, which begins at the base of the

Blautopf The Blautopf (German for ''Blue pot'') is a Spring (hydrosphere), spring that is considered the source of the river Blau (Danube), Blau in the karst landscape on the Swabian Jura's southern edge. It is located in Blaubeuren, Alb-Donau-Kreis, Bad ...

spring in the

Swabian Jura The Swabian Jura ( , more rarely ), sometimes also named Swabian Alps in English, is a mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, extending from southwest to northeast and in width. It is named after the region of Swabia. It is part of th ...

mountain range. The ''Speleonaut'' is wide and has nine engines, making it easy to maneuver in all directions. It is the first

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

designed specifically for the exploration of caves. According to Hasenmayer, the ''Speleonaut'' has been tested in

Lake Constance Lake Constance (, ) refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (). These ...

to a depth of and has a design limit of . The ''Speleonaut'' was first used at the Blautopf in 1996. In 2001 Hasenmayer reached the ''Mörikedom'' ("Mörike cathedral") chamber of the Blauhöhle, which he had discovered in 1985, in the ''Speleonaut''. In 2004 he reached a point beyond the ''Mörikedom'' into the mountain. In the same year he discovered two more large chambers in the Blauhöhle: the ''Mittelschiff'' (or "nave") and the ''Äonendom''.

References

External links

* * {{Dead link, date=October 2023 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes Submarines of Germany Cave diving 1996 ships Research submarines of Germany