During a ground-breaking expedition to the bottom of Belize’s Great Blue Hole, a team of scientists, including Virgin billionaire Richard Branson, have returned with fascinating results.
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The Great Blue Hole, which is around 125 metres (410 feet) deep and 300 metres (984 ft) broad, is the largest sinkhole in the world.
Jacques Cousteau’s grandson Fabien Cousteau, who established the Blue Hole in 1971, was also a member of the crew. In December 2018, the group set off on their journey with the goal of learning what lay at the bottom of the Blue Hole.
The mission used two submarines to take fresh photos and video within the Blue Hole and produce the first 3D map of its depths.
Speaking to CCN travel the operations manager, chief pilot and oceanographer Erika Bergman said ‘We did our complete 360 sonar map and that map is now almost complete. It looks really cool, it’s this mesh-layered, sonar scan of the entire thousand-foot diameter hole’
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Unheard-of stalactites, a sort of mineral formations resembling icicles, were discovered 407 feet into the hole, extremely near the bottom, according to Bergman – interesting as they have never been mapped there before!
“One of the crazy things about the hole is the hydrogen sulfide layer,” says Bergman.
At 300 feet into its descent, the layer completely blocks out all light, sending divers into total darkness. Bergman notes that after the Caribbean sunlight is gone, the area simply goes pitch black and becomes fully anoxic with no life whatsoever. Nothing. How disturbing..
There are so many things we still don’t know and haven’t explored in our world’s oceans and seas but hopefully with continual technology advancements one day we will able to see even deeper. But for now the mystery of the Deep Blue Hole is solved!
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Featured Image Credit: CNN Travel
