EXPLORING MYSTERIOUS BOTTOM OF BELIZE BLUE HOLE BY RAMON LLANEZA The entrance to Xibalba. The Mysterious Belize Great Blue Hole is a large underwater hole off the coast of Belize. It lies near the centre of Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the mainland and Belize City. The hole is perfectly circular in shape, over 300 meters (1,000 ft) across, 3,140 feet circumference and 125 meters (410 ft) deep. It was formed as a limestone cave system during the last glacial period when the sea level was 400 to 500 feet below present time and was dry land. Last glacial period began about 120,000 years ago and end about 15,000 years ago. Reaching the maximum extension 26,500 years ago. At the end the ocean began to rise, the caves flooded, and the roof collapsed. Believed to be the worlds largest feature of its kind, the Great Blue Hole is part of the larger Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, a World Heritage site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The hole itself is the opening to a system of caves and passageway that penetrate this undersea mountain. In various places, massive limestone stalactites hang down from what was once the ceiling of air-filled caves thousands of years before the end of the last Ice Age 15,000 years ago. When the ice melted the sea level rose, flooding the caves. This process occurred in stages. Evidence for this are the shelves and ledges, carved into the limestone by the sea, which run the complete interior circumference of the Blue Hole at various depths. The Blue Hole is a karst- eroded sinkhole. It was once a cave at the centre of an underground tunnel complex whose ceiling collapsed. Some of the tunnels are thought to be linked right through to the mainland, though this has never been conclusively proved. Notable are the large population of sharks such as lemon, black tip, reef, hammerhead, and bull sharks. Mysterious and legends always have been around the Belize Blue Hole. This was the entrance to Xibalba? Its the kind of underwater geology that inspires speculation about aliens creating geometrically perfect anomalies, mermaids and monsters living in darkness. I explored the bottom of the Blue Hole perimeter (3,140 feet circumference). To do this I dived down twice, reaching the depth of 375 feet which took four to five hours of diving each day. youtube/watch?v=6mqQHmJFtsY&list=PLbpi6ZahtOH5Rg1h3n8zZCDa7bdEnaCCV&feature=w32-06
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 08:45:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015