Divers Discover Disturbing Findings in Belize’s Blue Hole

The Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System (BBRRS) is made up of seven protected areas: Bacalar Chico National Park and Marine Reserve, Blue Hole Natural Monument, Half Moon Caye Natural Monument, South Water Caye Marine Reserve, Glover’s Reef Marine Reserve, Laughing Bird Caye National Park, and Sapodilla Cayes Marine Reserve. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. It is the second largest reef system in the world and the largest in the Atlantic and Caribbean area. The BBRRS is made up of seven protected places that together cover 12% of the whole Reef Complex.

Before millions of years, the Blue Hole was a big network of caves. It is now the biggest sinkhole in the world. A group of explorers recently set out to see what was hiding in the depths of this ocean formation that had never been explored.

A thick layer of poisonous hydrogen sulfide that covered the whole sinkhole like a floating blanket was to blame. Erika Bergman: Under that, there’s no oxygen and no life, and we found conchs, conch shells, and hermit crabs that had fallen into the hole and died.

The Great Blue Hole is a huge sinkhole in the ocean that is near the coast of Belize. It is near the middle of Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 70 km (43 mi) from the mainland and Belize City. The hole is round and 318 meters (1,043 feet) wide and 124 meters (407 feet) deep. It covers an area of 70,650 square meters (760,500 sq ft). It was made when the sea level was much lower during several periods of quaternary glaciation. A look at the Great Blue Hole’s stalactites shows that they formed 153,000, 66,000, 60,000, and 15,000 years ago. When the water started to rise again, it flooded the cave. The Great Blue Hole is part of the larger UNESCO World Heritage Site that is the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System.

Exploration

Jacques Cousteau made the site famous when he said it was one of the top five places to scuba dive in the world. In 1971, he used his ship, the Calypso, to measure the depth of the hole. This expedition’s research showed that the hole was made by typical karst limestone formations. These formations were made before the sea level rose in at least four stages, leaving ledges at depths of 21 m (69 ft), 49 m (161 ft), and 91 m (300 ft) (299 ft). Stalactites were found in caves that were underwater, proving that they formed above sea level. Some of these stalactites were also off-vertical by 5° in a consistent way. This showed that the underlying plateau had also moved and tilted in the past, followed by a long time in the current plane. The tilt shows that the land moved and that it wasn’t just the rise in sea level. The Great Blue Hole was first measured to be about 125 m (410 ft) deep, which is still the depth that is most often used.

In the summer of 1997, an expedition went to the Blue Hole to get core samples from the floor and make a map of the cave system.

All of the divers had to be certified in cave diving and mixed gases in order to do these jobs.

In December 2018, two submarines went into the Blue Hole to try to make a map of what was inside. The team was almost done making a 3-D map of the 1,000-foot-wide hole by scanning it with sonar. At a depth of about 300 feet, they found a layer of hydrogen sulfide, which was one of the things they found (91 m). At that depth and below, the water is dark, has no oxygen, and has no life. The crew of the submarine also found the bodies of t

Tourism

The Great Blue Hole is a popular place for recreational scuba divers to go. They are drawn there by the chance to dive in water that is sometimes as clear as glass and see different kinds of fish, such as the midnight parrotfish, the Caribbean reef shark, and other young fish. There have been reports of other sharks there, like bull sharks and hammerheads, but they are not often seen. Most day trips to the Great Blue Hole in Belize are full-day trips from the tourist towns along the coast.

In Belize and the Yucatán Peninsula, where they are called cenotes, there are many caves on land that look like large sinkholes that have collapsed. In the Blue Hole, there aren’t many signs of horizontal growth like there are in the cenotes on the mainland, which often lead to underwater cave systems.

Discovery Channel’s list of “The 10 Most Amazing Places on Earth” from 2012 put the Great Blue Hole at the top.

In 2018, they showed Discovery Live: Into the Blue Hole, a two-hour special with Erika Bergman, Fabien Cousteau, and Richard Branson.

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