Many of the animals that we find in the caves are known only from a single cave and nowhere else in the world,? said Dr. Iliffe. ?If that one cave is destroyed or polluted those animals will become extinct. There is a very really possibility of extinction within the caves, because the animals are found in so few numbers and so specialised locations. The destruction of that location means the destruction of the organism.?

The organisms in Bermuda caves range from the size of a large shrimp to microscopic. They drifted to Bermuda over immense periods of time, and some of their closest relatives can only be found as far away as Europe and the Mediterranean.

?Somehow these animals got most of the way across the Atlantic Ocean to Bermuda, but never got that little bit further to the Caribbean or North America,? said Dr. Iliffe. ?So these are of great scientific interest.

?One of the very tiny animals that we are studying is called the copepod. Copepods are the most numerous animals on earth. There are more species of copepods of one particular species than all insects combined.

?Erebonectes is the most primitive known copepod ever found. It occurs only in Bermuda and nowhere else. It is a tiny little animal that actually swims in the water column in the caves. It is completely white and it has no eyes. It has been in the caves for many millions if not tens of millions of years; it is a living fossil.?

Scientists are hoping that Erebonectes will help them to not only understand the evolution of copepods, but the evolution of all life on Earth. For this reason this humble Bermuda resident is the most important copepod known to science.

?It?s not too late to turn the situation around for Bermuda cave eco-systems,? said Dr. Iliffe.

?Bermudians just have to make the right choices.?

Issues of concern for the caves include pollution, vandalism, destruction of caves, development activities and people building houses.

?One of the aims of the conference was to get some of the world?s foremost cave experts together to provide input on the actions that Bermudians need to take,? said Dr. Iliffe. ?Some of them involve additional research and further studies to document what is going on. If we ignore the situation, within the next decade we will have gone, in some instances, past the point of no return.?

Pollution, particularly from deep well injection systems, was a serious concern for the scientists.

?Deep well injection is done in Florida where they drill to a depth of 3,000 feet,? said Dr. Iliffe. ?Here they drill to a depth of about 100 feet.

?One hundred feet isn?t deep so it should be called shallow well injection. They call it deep well so it sounds like you are really getting rid of the pollution. What happens is you are putting organic matter or partially treated sewage down a hole. Some of the hotels and businesses here do it.

?Instead of putting your waste into a cess pit where it can decompose naturally the wastes are pumped into the ground. What happens is that underground there is no light. Because there is not light there are no plants and photosynthesis.

?Because of that, levels of dissolved oxygen in the cave water is relatively low in comparison to water on the surface. It becomes even lower or is used up altogether when organic waste is dumped into.

?In short order the oxygen disappears and poisonous hydrogen sulphide begins to take its place. Hydrogen sulfide is what gives that strong rotten egg smell. It could effect the drinking water. Bermuda water tanks are pretty well lined so it is not enough to get into the actual tanks, but it could possibly effect the government aquifer where some of the government pumps up ground water that is used and distributed for drinking around the island. Most of it is serious where it is occurring in the cave area.?

Dr. Iliffe said he was not on the Island to tell Bermudians what to do, but he wanted Bermudians to have the right information when making decisions.

?While some things have gotten worse since I was last in Bermuda, other things have improved,? he said. ?For example, we had permission from the owner to go into Leamington Caves. About 15 years ago there was some serious pollution in it.

?I was heartened when I went into that cave yesterday and found no sign of pollution. It hasn?t been shown to tourists for about the last eight years.?

At the conference, one of the suggestions was to turn a local cave into an educational laboratory. Scientists and Bermudian school children would be able to come to the cave and learn from it. ?When we do research projects here we would like to set something up to involve the students,? he said. ?This is about protecting and preserving unique natural resources for all Bermudians, hopefully for all time to come. That is my goal. I would be more than happy to work with anybody or anyone in order to see this goal succeed, especially land owners to see that their caves are properly protected and treated.?

Dr. Iliffe said people who own caves are exceptionally lucky. He hopes that some of his passion for caves will rub off on the people he meets, and they will appreciate what Bermuda has.

His interest in caves actually began in Bermuda when he worked for the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR).

?I was working on a project sponsored by the Bermuda government to study tar that was washing up on the beaches of the island,? he said. ?One of my hobbies had been exploring caves.

?I just did it for fun with no science involved. When I came here I was very pleased to hear that there were caves on the Island. So I started going out and looking at the caves.?

He wondered what kind of animals lived in Bermuda caves and started to do some research. He found that the literature on salt water caves was solely lacking as most studies, until that point, had been done on fresh water caves.

?I got in touch with a biologist in Yugoslavia who had done some studies of caves along the Adriatic Sea in salt water,? he said. ?I invited him to come to Bermuda. He came here for about two or three weeks.

?We did some collections from the caves and found some extraordinarily interesting animals. One thing led to another. I started applying for research grants to study the caves and the cave animals. Wolfgang Sterrer, who was the director of the BBSR at that time, was a huge influence on my career. He strongly encouraged me even though my job was to do oil pollution.?

Dr. Iliffe said he was grateful that Dr. Sterrer hadn?t told him to forget about caves and focus on what he was hired to do, study tar.

?He allowed me to have free rein and develop a whole new field of research,? said Dr. Iliffe. ?Since that time I have conducted cave biology projects in the Bahamas, Yucatan, Canary Island and a number of locations across the Pacific. I have also done them all around the Caribbean, South Pacific and around the world.?

But Dr. Iliffe cautioned that cave diving and spelunking is something that requires special skills and training. It can be very dangerous.

?You can be a very good open water diver, and get killed in caves very easily because it is very different,? he said. ?In the ocean if there is a problem you can swim up to the surface and you are fine. In a cave you have a rock ceiling over your head and normally the only way out is back the way you came in.?