Great Blue Hole

Great Blue Hole

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Try not to think about what awaits below
The Great Blue Hole is the world’s largest natural formation of its kind, and it is part of the larger Barrier Reef Reserve System in Belize . It is a World Heritage Site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and is ranked as a top scuba diving site in the world. Its fame has stemmed from its beautiful waters, stunning size and grandeur, and its fantastic variety of marine life.
The Great Blue Hole has been described by NASA as “surrounded by darker, deeper ocean waters, with coral atolls that often glow in vibrant hues of turquoise, teal, peacock blue, or aquamarine. Belize’s Lighthouse Reef Atoll fits this description, with its shallow waters covering light-colored coral: the combination of water and pale corals creates varying shades of blue-green.
Within this small sea of light colors, however, lies a giant circle of deep blue”. Their description of the beauty cannot do it justice enough though. It is an incredible site and is renowned for a reason. It is an amazing destination to take in all that mother nature has to offer, and there are numerous adventures awaiting you to discover. So, to showcase the wonders within this natural spectacle of planet Earth, here are a batch of incredible pictures that make us want to visit, along with others that make us shudder.#
Updated by Lauren Feather, February 19, 2022: The Great Blue Hole never loses its allure as one of the world's most jaw-dropping natural attractions. Showing exactly what Mother Nature can do when left to do what she does best, the hole attracts adventurers from all corners of the globe to discover her unquivering talents. As more people visit the majestic wonder, more photos appear, and as scientists continue to study the hole and its features, even more fascinating facts are learned - both that make us shudder, while on the other hand, give us the desire to visit this truly spectacular place. This why we've included many more mind-boggling facts and photos of the Great Blue Hole that will hopefully inspire readers to visit, or raise their hairs!
The Great Blue Hole is located about 100 kilometers off of the coast of Belize, in the Caribbean Sea. According to CN traveller , it is one of the world’s most iconic sites in Central America. The site garners international attention for its beautiful waters and for its majesty.
Although Belize is a tiny piece of land south of Mexico and east of Guatemala, World Adventure Divers states that tourists continue to flock to Belize for its beautiful coastlines and to see this natural wonder. Arriving by speedboat or plane, everyone can appreciate the Great Blue Hole.
Caves Branch states that the drop off is what makes the Great Blue Hole so exciting. The depth creates a darkness, so many of the divers feel as though they are descending into a mythical underworld.
As people have been unable to explore the bottom before, no one knows what is beneath on the sea floor. Many assume there will be a build-up of silt from over the years, however no one knows what marine life might be living down there. As you dive deeper, try not to think about what is below you!
After a two-hour journey on a bumpy speedboat from the Belize coastline, you arrive at the Great Blue Hole in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. According to CN Traveler, the Great Blue Hole measures around 305 meters or around 1000 feet across and is a breathtaking site upon arrival.
Revered for its size and grandeur, many marvel at how perfectly circular the hole is. It is the world’s largest natural formation of its kind according to UNESCO. The water here is calm due to the surrounding circular reef, making it a perfect site to explore.
Hopefully you aren’t afraid of the dark! Due to the depth of the sinkhole, sunlight is unable to reach the floor of the hole which gives the area an inky blue darkness.
Recently, Glyn Collinson, a NASA scientist explored the Great Blue Hole and stated that it was the “deepest, deep blue hole imaginable; a chasm that fell away deep into the deep, dark blue’ stated Belize.com. Visibility is minimal which provides a sense of isolation, so if you want to explore the area, make sure to bring a light!
Did you know you can skydive into the Great Blue Hole? It has been done and there is ample photo evidence. Sometimes regular diving isn’t a thrill enough and skydiving adds more excitement. It has been done before, and many videos have surfaced on the internet of individuals and groups skydiving into the depths of the Great Blue Hole.
As if it didn’t already have enough intrigue and interest around it. This makes for an epic photo opportunity and has created even more interest in the destination.
Many divers like to dive to see beautiful colorful marine life, however, the Great Blue Hole is the home to more interesting and unique creatures. Swimming around through the surrounding coral, you can find many different types thriving. Coral such as Elkhorn and Brain Corals have grown in the shallower portions. There you can find denizens, Pederson’s shrimp, neon gobies, angelfish, groupers and purple sea fans.
It provides a perfect up close and personal interaction with marine life, while observing all of the beauty surrounding you.
There are many scuba diving operators that offer excursions to explore the Great Blue Hole. However, due to its tricky conditions and unnerving depths, only divers with sufficient experience are permitted to dive it. The hole is open on the surface - which isn't a problem for newbie divers - but the issue is t he extensive cave system housed within that demands skill and experience to navigate . As such, only divers with at least 24 logged dives are allowed to descend.
Swimming among all of that beautiful coral, marine life and ancient geographic formations, are many different types of more intimidating animals. There are multiple types of shark brimming in the area. Species such as the Caribbean Reef shark, bull sharks, black tip sharks, giant groupers, nurse sharks and hammerhead sharks can all be found navigating through the waters.
According to the World Adventure Divers, once you start scuba diving, you hear very quickly about the Great Blue Hole. As its popularity and interest has grown, it has become a world-class destination for diving due to this sinkhole, marine life and atolls.
It has been proclaimed as a top 10 dive spot in the world by many, and it upholds its reputation to this day. Sources such as the Discovery Channel and Scuba Travel Magazine all declare it was one of the best.
The Great Blue Hole is an enormous submarine sinkhole in the Caribbean Sea. The hole is circular and is almost 125 meters or 410 feet deep. The Curiosity states that this is taller than the world’s tallest tree and wider than three football fields across. Thousands of years ago, the Great Blue Hole was actually a dry on-land cave system, which we know by the mineral dripping which only forms in on-land cave ceilings.
Eventually, sea levels rose and caused this system to collapse and the sea filled in the hole left behind.
The Great Blue Hole is estimated to be around 150,000 years old, formed by a long geological process that produced this natural marvel. Experts believe it began being formed about 153,000 years ago, and finished off in the shape it is today approximately 15,000 years ago.
The Great Blue Hole is a sinkhole that was created by a ‘karst cave system’ according to the CN Traveler. According to Cahalpech, scientists believe that these structures were formed in a dry cavern above sea level during the glacial periods, but after thousands of years of erosion, the soft rock inside collapsed. However, much of these cave structures still remain visible today.
This essentially formed a massive vertical cave, which includes a limestone shelf about 40 feet below the surface and many smaller cave areas throughout.
Thanks to its imposing bottomless allure and mighty depths, the Great Blue Hole has become a bucket-list worthy for free-divers all around the globe. Freediving is different to scuba diving; it involves descending and swimming deep without any tanks or breathing apparatus, and is an incredibly liberating experience with a whole host of therapeutic and enjoyable benefits.
Though it does require plenty of training and practice, anybody who can swim is able to try the sport and become a skilled free-diver (but perhaps starting out somewhere a little less challenging - like shallower pools and reefs - are better for beginners instead of the Great Blue Hole). Furthermore, many of the world's most experienced, award-winning free diving enthusiasts make their way to the hole every year to enjoy the thrilling experiences it effortlessly provides.
The Great Blue Hole is near the centre of the Lighthouse Reef in the Caribbean Sea . This ancient sea structure might have begun developing over 70 million years ago, and might have originated on top of giant fault blocks rather than subsiding volcanoes. Most likely, limestone covered ridges settled into steps offshore which provided platforms for coral growth.
After the last Ice Age, the sea level began to rise and the coral growth expanded. This created the outer waters and shallow inside lagoon. This island of coral garners much attention annually from divers and scientists alike.
As mentioned before, the geology of the area indicates that The Great Blue Hole can be dated all the way back to the Ice Age. According to Cahalpech, water used to filter through the rocks, however millions of years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, the waters rose due to the polar ice-caps and led the caverns to be engulfed by the sea.
These forces caused this chasm to collapse onto itself and create the sinkhole that we see today. The rock formations show evidence of this, adding interest to the area.
It's both fascinating and fearful that the Great Blue Hole was once situated inland. Scientists analyzing the hole's features discovered that it was originally a cave on land before it became flooded due to rising sea levels over time. Whilst this naturally occurring phenomenon does take an exceptionally long time to affect the land and sea, it does induce chills, because as mere humans, we have no control over it. Mother Nature will do what she does no matter what we do, and we just have to suck it up and accept it. Many of our future islands and cities may be underwater some day, as evidenced by the Great Blue Hole and its dramatic change in circumstances over the millennia.
Much of the cave area remains unexplored. Most divers can only get 40 meters or 130 feet below the surface. More than half of the cave area has not been explored in depth. IFLScience stated that a new study is being conducted in December 2018 to construct a real-life model of the sinkhole and to collect information on the water quality.
The first part of the expedition aired on the Discovery Channel, however, the research will continue. One the team is Richard Branson and Jacques Cousteau’s son, Fabien Cousteau.
Even the most experienced divers will find the Great Blue Hole interesting. Cahalpech states that starting at the surface, divers enter a steeply walled entrance and descend to find remnants of the rock formations and cave system from the Ice Age. Much of the cave system was destroyed during the collapse of the sinkhole, however the structure remains.
Divers enjoy negotiating their way around and exploring through the rock formations, enjoying little light as they make their descent. Many are awestruck as they take in the ancient structures.
Many divers are particularly interested in the underwater stalactites and stalagmites, which were formed during the last glacial period. Some of these stalactites and stalagmites measure up to 12 meters or 40 feet in length, according to Belize.com. Cahalpech states that the first formations can be seen as you begin your descent, and divers enjoy exploring the overhangs and giant stalagmites.
If you are able to dive even further, it is possible to explore bedrock ledges and underwater dunes! Farther than that, divers find a limestone shelf, however any farther descent leads into the unknown.
The Belize Atolls are an anomaly in the Caribbean. There is nothing else in the Western Hemisphere that resembles a true coral atoll according to Belize.com other than perhaps the Chinchorro Reef off of Mexico’s southern coastline in the Yucatan Peninsula.
According to geologists, they are even more rare and unusual because the origin of their formation does not seem to mimic or mirror that of the atolls that can be found in the Pacific Ocean, where rings of coral are found more frequently. Also as more coral continues to die off globally, this preserved reef becomes increasingly more special.

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Francesca Street, CNN • Updated 8th October 2019
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(CNN) — A team of scientists -- including Virgin billionaire Richard Branson -- has returned from a groundbreaking mission to the bottom of Belize's Great Blue Hole with exciting findings.
The Great Blue Hole is the world's largest sinkhole, measuring an incredible 300 meters (984 feet) across and roughly 125 meters (410 feet) deep.
The team also included Fabien Cousteau, grandson of underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau -- who put the Blue Hole on the map back in 1971. The group embarked on their odyssey in December 2018, determined to discover the secrets at the bottom of the Blue Hole.
Using two submarines, the expedition captured new images and footage inside the Blue Hole and created the first 3D map of its interior.
"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," Erika Bergman, chief pilot, oceanographer and operations manager, tells CNN Travel.
Blue Hole dispatches: In December, the Blue Hole Belize 2018 Expedition took submersibles -- including an Aquatica Stingray 500 -- to the bottom of the hole to see what lies beneath. Now they're back with their findings.
Courtesy Aquatica Submarines/Thomas Bodhi Wade
Bergman says one of the most exciting findings was never-before-seen stalactites -- a type of mineral formations shaped like icicles -- roughly 407 feet into the hole, very near the bottom.
"That was pretty exciting, because they haven't been mapped there before, they haven't been discovered there before," she says.
Bergman says the whole experience of being submerged in the murky depths was pretty incredible.
"One of the crazy things about the hole is the hydrogen sulfide layer," says Bergman.
The layer descends at roughly 300 feet, cutting out all the light and plunging divers into darkness.
"You lose all of that Caribbean sunlight and it just turns completely black, and it's totally anoxic down there with absolutely no life," explains Bergman.
The team, including Sir Richard Branson (center) and chief pilot Erika Bergman (second from left)
Courtesy Aquatica Submarines/Gaelin Rosenwaks
But thanks to their high-resolution sonar, Bergman and her team were able to see the hole's intricate features.
"You can be 20 or 30 meters away from a stalactite or a hunk of the wall and see it in every perfect detail, better than eyesight could even provide," she says.
Intriguingly, not everything the team found could be identified. They found some unidentifiable tracks at the bottom of the hole -- Bergman says these remain "open to interpretation."
The Stingray 500 Submarine on the edge of Lighthouse Reef
Courtesy Aquatica Submarines/Thomas Bodhi Wade
The team was also really pleased to see that the Blue Hole was pretty free from trash.
"There were basically two or three little pieces of plastic -- and other than that, it was really, really clear," says Bergman, spotlighting the work of the Belize Audubon Society, which helps protect the hole.
Bergman says there's very little visible human impact.
"It's neat that there are spaces on our planet -- and most of them in the oceans -- that are exactly the way they were thousands of years ago and will remain exactly the way they are thousands of years in the future."
The dive was broadcast on the Discovery Channel.
Courtesy Aquatica Submarines/Thomas Bodhi Wade
The Blue Hole Belize 2018 Expedition was broadcast live on the Discovery Channel on Sunday December 2, 2018.
The original aim was to broadcast live from the bottom of the hole. This proved tricky, but the team still found a way to bring the experience into people's homes.
"We dove the morning before the livestream, and then livestreamed from the ship being very open and clear about the footage having been filmed a few hours before," says Bergman.
Bergman and the rest of the team are keen to find other innovative ways of transporting images from the ocean onto personal handheld devices.
She namechecks the International Space Station, and the way astronauts live-message from the sky, bringing people there with them.
"Drawing people into that -- the way people are fascinated with astronauts -- giving them a chance to relate that to deep ocean exploration, I think that's done through the live interaction," says Bergman.
The team hopes to embark on other exciting dives later in
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