Jul 21 - Bahamas Weird Blue Holes!

Bahamas' 'blue holes' hold wonders and weird science - USATODAY.com



By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
What lies below the Bahamas in the Caribbean? A veiled world of fossils, blind creatures and scientific riddles.
In next month's issue of National Geographic magazine, an international team of cave divers led by anthropologist Kenny Broad of the University of Miami reveals the mysteries hidden from vacationers' view.

The two-month expedition, paid for by the National Geographic Society, was merely a small slice of time in a years-long effort to uncover the secrets of this realm, which has been plumbed by researchers for at least three decades.

Only a few miles inland from the Bahamas' sparkling coral reefs, the islands' limestone boasts dozens of submerged caves, "blue holes," some of them hidden in what look like island swimming holes linked to the ocean.

But swimming holes they are not. The inland caves on five islands sport freshwater caps covering heavier saltwater layers, sometimes filled with clouds of poisonous hydrogen sulfide released by salt-eating microbes, acting to preserve whatever falls within. Others contain whirlpools powered by the tides.

"Cave diving is really about knowing your limits," Broad says. "But it provides one of the most amazing experiences in life, and the scientific opportunities are tremendous."

Says cave diver and geologist Patricia Beddows of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who was not part of the expedition: "Each one of these cave diving expeditions, without fail, provides an enormous amount of information. Cave diving is an extraordinarily powerful tool to allow us to get into the heart of karst (cave) systems worldwide."

In submerged caves such as Stargate on Andros island in the Bahamas, the expedition team reports:

• Specialized "chemosynthetic" bacteria that live without oxygen and feast on chemical reactions possible only in the caves.

• Stalactite curtains, or "speleothems," that contain a record of past sea level and climate conditions locked in their structures.

• Fossils of Lucayan tribe members who lived on the islands until the 1500s.

"We've brought scientists from many disciplines together so our results inform each other's work," Broad says. "The initial exploration is just a proof of concept. We still have lots of work ahead."

Coastal regions of the Caribbean, such as Florida, Cuba and the Yucatán, and other regions worldwide contain limestone permeated with caves, Beddows notes, leading to such blue holes. In addition to their scientific value, they often serve as freshwater resources for increasing numbers of people in those regions, which makes investigation of them essential for public health.

Sea level about 20,000 years ago, during the height of an Ice Age, was hundreds of feet lower in the Bahamas. The transition has left its mark on the speleothems and geology of the caves, Broad says, making each one a laboratory for measuring the effects of past changes in climate.

Each cave diving expedition requires years of preparation, and the results will affect scientific conclusions for years afterward.

"It's possible to make a direct comparison between what we do and exploring outer space," Beddows says. Years of training for short investigations in a hostile environment are the hallmarks of cave diving science, which she describes as a "select" discipline, slowly growing in numbers but now increasingly established.

Alongside the danger, the blue holes of the Bahamas have offered little allure for divers who in some cases could instead walk to beaches with access to some of the world's most beautiful coral reefs.

"Why dive into a muddy-looking hole when you can head for the beach?" Broad says. "But (the holes) are really fascinating places once you start looking."

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Lmao, nigga said weird blue holes. Those are caves lol.

TL DR


anyone swim in it? what happened

this world is coming to an end real talk

too many signs point to this s**t ahppening now like the bible says

Illuminati members have their meetings there

Wow. Pretty damn cool.

dont mind these! they're just the earth's pussies!

earth pussies.. LOL

black holes

yuppers

You guys are fools saying the world's coming to an end. Of course the s**t's coming to an end!!! Do we know this? SURE! Do we know when? No. The Bible also says "Only God knows when the world will end". Carry on theorists!!!

*by the way* You do guys know that most of these holes are only like 600-800 feet deep right? ^__^ The ocean goes much deeper. It's like ass-backwards mountains. If those things turned into dicks instead of pussies, would y'all be so freaked out? *no homo on that*

thats where i ftw

. no s**t pachenko thanks for the insight

im scared

also says alot of them are bottomless

beautiful pictures

id like to see how credible that mermaid s**t is tho, they just popped a sentence about it in the article

but I bet if you went around the villages theyd all know about it