Gruna da Bananeira (sifão a montante)

On 20 September 2004, cave diver Gilberto Menezes reached 6,400 m in the upstream sump of Gruna da Bananeira, the longest cave dive in the world at the time; the previous record was 5,880 m, in the sump of La Doux de Coly, in France. To reach that mark, he made 43 dives starting in 2002, adding up to more than 170 hours underwater. In 2004, the cave had about 6,500 m mapped, of which about 5,400 m were underwater. Gruna da Bananeira is part of the hydrological system of Gruta do Padre, which has 16.3 km of passages, and it is here that the Santo Antônio River returns to the surface after flowing almost 15 km inside Gruta do Padre. In 2004, it was estimated that at least 1.5 km of sump still separated the two caves.