I thought the Mahdi
The Great Blue Hole was a source of deep-sea monsters and Mayan mysteries, located along the world's second largest coral reef system, 70 kilometers from the coast of Belize City on the Caribbean.
The hole consists of a complex system with a width of more than 300 meters from limestone caves that have sunk 100 feet per 100 years over the past 14,000 years as a result of the melting of ice peaks formed during the last ice cap.
An exploratory expedition began in December 2018, headed by Erica Bergman, who studied chemical oceanography at the University of Washington.
Bergman plunged 125 meters (410 feet) toward the bottom in a special submarine for this purpose, where the team noticed a group of exotic "tracks" on the sand.
Bergman explains in one of her papers that it is not common to drop the coincidence from the edge of the blue hole automatically without the existence of reasons for this.
This can be explained by the fact that these snails were not able to crawl on the walls of the steep hole, and their inevitable end of death was suffocated in an oxygen-free medium, which inspired us to call the place "oyster tombs".
Each conch leaves an impact in its attempt to climb and another as it slides down, but a lot of sand flows over the edge of the hole to quickly cover the strangled oysters, and so the process repeats itself.
The real monsters facing the ocean
The Bergman team included Fabian Costo, grandson of explorer Jacques Cousteau, and billionaire British entrepreneur Richard Branson, founder of Virgin International Group.
The team went on to probe the bottom of the hole under the mist of hydrogen sulfide that had been collected for centuries with no evidence of the presence of oxygen there.
"We did not expect to see any creatures at the bottom, but when we reached the bottom we were surprised by the presence of crabs, snails and other creatures that fell into the hole and died with the absence of oxygen," Branson documents his vision in a post on the Virgin Group Web site.
Using the sonar, the team discovered that a large number of stalactites and stalactites were hanging like giant ice columns.
The expedition has led more than 20 diving missions to the corners of the blue hole, and now the team has presented the first three-dimensional integrated map of this natural marvel.
"Unfortunately, we saw plastic bottles at the bottom of the hole, which foreshadows a real scourge that threatens the oceans," Branson said in his blog. "We hope that the results of our journey will create awareness On the need to protect the ocean and address climate change now and before it is too late. "