From the surface, Chetumal Bay looks almost placid – just a wide sheet of water with no hint of drama underneath. But below that calm is Taam ja’, a massive underwater sinkhole, or “blue hole,” that’s turned into an unexpected mystery for scientists.
At first, the plan seemed straightforward: map it with sonar, get a depth, move on. Instead, the early readings created a bigger problem – what if Taam ja’ isn’t anywhere near as shallow as those first numbers suggested?
The most recent measurements point to a hole that drops far deeper than expected, and the true bottom may still be out of reach…
We have submersibles that can explore and even carry a human to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which is over 10km deep, far deeper than this hole could possibly be. But they are very expensive and I’d guess it’s not worth the cost to map out an obscure feature of a bay.
We should assemble a team of billionaires and send them down there in a plastic submarine. For…science.
If they get the writer of this article to help write their grant proposal, they may just get the money.