GREAT BLUE HOLE - WORLD LARGEST SEA HOLE IN BELIZE

The outstanding blue hole, located simply a 100 kilometers (60 miles) off the coast of belize, is an underwater sinkhole that researchers believe is the biggest of its type.

Photo Credit : chabilmarvillas

Circular in shape and characterised by its wealthy, blue coloration, it is over three hundred meters (984 feet) throughout and a hundred twenty five meters (410 ft) deep. It lies in the center of an atoll known as lighthouse reef, where an island of coral encircles the shallow, light turquoise-colored waters of a lagoon. Water ranges there are so shallow that parts of the hoop surrounding the dark blue sinkhole are even regarded to crest the floor at low tide.

The sinkhole initially fashioned as a limestone cave over the last glacial length, a time whilst sea stages had been a good deal decrease. As the sea commenced to rise, the cave device flooded and sooner or later collapsed, growing a “vertical cave” within the ocean. As such, the web site is famous among divers, who flock to the location to see the geological formations that now lie in the ocean’s depths.

One such diver was undersea explorer jacques cousteau, who made the website well-known in 1971 with the aid of asserting it one of the top ten satisfactory diving locations inside the global. On the time, cousteau, crusing on his deliver calypso, investigated the sinkhole’s depths and showed that it had, certainly, originated from a limestone cave formation. Large stalactites and stalagmites had been also found below the floor, a few even attaining 9-12 meters (30-forty ft) in duration.

Photo Credit : wikipedia

These geological formations can nonetheless be regarded through divers today. It's miles stated that the deeper one is going, the water becomes greater clean and the formations, more complicated. The fantastic blue hollow is part of the bigger belize barrier reef reserve system, a global history website online of the united nations instructional, scientific and cultural corporation (unesco).  Some dive tours can be booked out of inns on lengthy caye and the turneffe islands, ambergris caye, caye caulker and belize city.