Inside Gabon's Longest Mapped Cave

German cave explorer Michael Laummans squeezes through a cave passage in Gabon during the summer of 2008. Laumanns was part of a team of explorers and scientists, funded in part by a National Geographic Society Young Explorers grant, mapping an extensive cave system just hours southeast of the capital city of Libreville.

Grotte de Mbenalatembe (above in a newly released picture) was mapped to be 7,808 feet (2,380 meters) long, making it the longest recorded cave in Gabon. The previous record-holder was Grotte de Kessipougou, which was mapped at close to a mile (1.5 kilometers) long.



Dave Daversa, from Pennsylvania, explores the end of Grottes de Lastourville in Gabon after climbing down a waterfall more than 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall. Daversa was part of a July-August 2008 expedition that mapped the longest recorded cave in Gabon.The cave had previously been investigated by Westerners in the 1970s, when French explorer Andre Delorme conducted research there. The 2008 expedition was only possible during the relatively safe dry season.



A 150-foot-long (45-meter-long) light shaft illuminates Grottes de Lastourville in Gabon in a picture released in April 2009.

An expedition team that explored the cave system last summer never discovered the above-ground entrance in the rainforest. But the cavers did explore a total of 14 caves and were able to map 11 of them. The team charted a total of 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) of cave--"a large geographical addition to Central Africa," said National Geographic Society Young Explorers grantee and expedition leader Trevor Frost.

Frost and his team hope to help build a case for making the cave system a protected UNESCO World Heritage site.


A bat zips by caver Dave Daversa in the newly documented Grotte de Moughambi in Gabon.

An expedition team that explored the cave system in the summer of 2008 encountered swarms of bats as well as crabs, fish, and frogs. On one occasion a bat flew into a U.S. $4,000 camera and broke the flash. The team also photographed five distinct species of frogs, several of which may be new to science.


Cave explorers Nancy Pistole (foreground) and Dave Daversa scan Gabon's Grotte de Lebamba, in the northwestern corner of the country, in a photo taken in the summer of 2008.

The 2,428-foot-long (740-meter-long) cave was originally documented by French archaeologist Richard Oslisly in the 1990s.