''Speleonaut'' (named from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece 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 ...

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

submersible A submersible is a small watercraft designed to operate underwater. The term "submersible" is often used to differentiate from other underwater vessels known as submarines, in that a submarine is a fully self-sufficient craft, capable of in ...

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 div ...

. After the 1989 decompression accident that left his legs paralyzed, Hasenmayer designed the ''Speleonaut'' with his friend

Konrad Gehringer Konrad Gehringer (4 June 1939 – 12 December 2003) was a German car mechanic and bus driver who had a one-man operation for producing electronic organs in Pforzheim, Germany. Gehringer was best known as the inventor and developer of the one-man s ...

in order to continue exploring the

Blauhöhle The Blauhöhle is the largest 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, the ...

cave system, which begins at the base of the

Blautopf The Blautopf (German for ''Blue pot'') is a spring that serves as the source of the river Blau in the karst landscape on the Swabian Jura's southern edge. It is located in Blaubeuren, Alb-Donau-Kreis, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (approximately ...

spring in the

Swabian Jura The Swabian Jura (german: Schwäbische Alb , 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 ...

mountain range. The ''Speleonaut'' is wide and has nine engines, making it easy to maneuver in all directions. It is the first submarine designed specifically for the exploration of caves. According to Hasenmayer, the ''Speleonaut'' has been tested in

Lake Constance Lake Constance (german: Bodensee, ) 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 Lak ...

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

* * {{cite journal, url=http://rehatreff.de/archiv/doc_download/5-jochen-hasenmayer-rehatreff-22007, last=Pohl, first=Werner, title=Die wahren Abenteuer finden nicht in den Beinen statt, sondern im Kopf, trans-title="True adventures will not be found in the legs, but in the head", journal=RehaTreff, issue=2, language=German, publisher=AWS Medienverlag, location=

Ettlingen Ettlingen (; South Franconian: ''Eddlinge'') is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about south of the city of Karlsruhe and approximately from the border with Lauterbourg, in France's Bas-Rhin department. Ettlingen is the second largest to ...

, year=2007, pages=27–30, format=PDF, accessdate=26 July 2013 Submarines of Germany Cave diving 1996 ships Research submarines of Germany