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…

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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    6 hours ago

    Haha.

    If only they’d done a 30 second search on why this is a bad idea… Or the lack of testing.

    • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      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.

      • Archer@lemmy.world
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        30 minutes ago

        The CEO also left the sub exposed to the Canadian winter and freeze/thaw cycles because he was too cheap to pay for climate controlled storage

      • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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        5 hours ago

        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.