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…
Send some billionaires in a fancy sub! They have a great track record in the deep.
Send them all, in one big one.
It’s still astounding that really happened and wasn’t just the plot of a “Down Periscope” type movie.
If only they’d have gotten advice from [REDACTED], the director of Titanic.
Haha.
If only they’d done a 30 second search on why this is a bad idea… Or the lack of testing.
The thing is they DID test it! And they even had a working failure detection mechanism with the microphones. They had seen the signs of failure from previous dives. And then just ignored all of that.
Wow.
Guess their definition of test and mine are different. I’d want a whole slew of testing regimen, including test to failure over a long time - essentially years of running it unmanned.
You can definitely thoroughly test something then ignore the results.
I don’t think it would’ve mattered because they had all the evidence they needed and just ignored it regardless.