Mysteries of Belize's Great Blue Hole: A Dive into the Unknown

Hello Culture Kids! My name is Asher and I am your host along with my mom Kristen.  Have you checked out our website yet?  You can leave us a voicemail and let us know what you want to lerna bout next!  

Mom:  Today we’re going to learn about a place where our family got to visit and this place was so mysterious and marvelous it left us speechless.  Scientists have been studying this place for so many years since its discovery and I think we will be learning more about this place for years to come.  

Asher, can you tell us what we’re exploring today?

Asher:  The Great Blue Hole!! 

THe Great Blue Hole is the largest sea hole in the world located in Belize. 

Mom: Belize is a beautiful country in Central America.  The country is full of so much beauty and adventure, it is one of the most memorable places we have ever visited. 

Asher:  the Great Blue Hole is circular in shape and it’s really deep.  It is the largest sea hole in the world! 

Mom: it is located about 100 kilometers from Belize city, and it’s about a thousand feet in circumference-

Asher: circumference is the distance around the outside of a circle. 

Mom: exactly.  So the Great Blue Hole is a thousand feet in circumference and 400 feet in depth.

Asher:  that sounds really deep. 

Mom:  So the Great Blue Hole is very old.  Scientists think the cave was formed during the last ice age.

Mom:  The last ice age ended about roughly 14,000 years ago.  That’s when the sea levels began to rise.

Asher: because the ice sheets were melting!

Mom: yes, so this made the water levels on earth rise higher. So the great big hole was a cave on land back then.  But when the water levels rose, the cave flooded and then eventually collapsed!

Asher:  This collapse is what caused the blue hole. So it looks like a long long cave inside the water. 

Mom:  There are actually lots of holes like this all over the world.  But the great blue hole is the most famous one because it is one of the biggest in the world.  

Asher:  So let’s look inside what’s  in the big blue hole? 

Mom:  mommy and daddy got to go scuba diving in the great blue hole!  It is one of the most famous places to go scuba diving and definitely one of the most memorable ones we’ve done!! Divers can not go all the way down to 400 feet to the bottom of the hole because there is no oxygen there. And we’ll learn about why there is no oxygen at the bottom of the hole shortly.   But we still went down deep enough that when I looked down below, I couldn’t see anything,It was just pitch black- and the only sensation I can remember is hearing my breath through the gears.  It was a strange feeling.  But when I looked up, I saw tons of different sharks and fish circling around the hole.  

Asher:  wasn’t it so scary?

Mom:  So what's interesting is that I actually am a little scared of the darkness. But being inside the hole, looking down and seeing this type of darkness that I’ve never seen in my life was so fascinating that I didn’t feel any fear.  I was just amazed and in awe the whole time.  I was also focused on my breathing because I guess I was a little nervous. 

Asher: But what made it so magical?

Mom:  looking around the hole feels like you’re in some kind of mystical underwater world. Once you have submerged deep enough into the hole and everywhere around you is dark, you look up and you’ll see dozens of sharks and fish swimming above you, along with cave formations.  It was breathtaking and I have to say, I definitely started appreciating the beauty of our oceans in a way i haven't before.  

Asher: oh so there’s cave formations because it used to be a cave a long time ago in the ice age so it must still look like one. 

Mom: It sure did.  Scuba divers will travel across the world to check out these mysterious and fascinating formations.  This leads me to introduce the word of the week which is…

STALACTITES! 

This is such a tricky word, let’s practice it slowly.

STA.

Asher: STA

Mom: LAC.

Asher: LAC

Mom: TITES

Asher:  TITES!

Mom: stalactites are shaped like icicles! They are formations that hang from the ceiling of a cave.  

Asher:  stalactites form slowly over a long period of time when water slowly drips from cracks in the ceiling.

Mom: kinda like a leaky faucet. There are minerals dissolved in the water that build up over time.  Most stalactites take a very long time to grow.  Some

Stalactites take an inch to grow every hundred years!!! 

Asher:  That's a long time.  So that means the blue hole is really old

Mom: scientists roughly estimate that the great blue hole is about 150,000 years old!

Asher:  And there’s another word we have to know that’s kind of like stalactites. 

Mom:  yes.  This word is called STALAGMITES. .  Let’s practice saying this word too. 

Mom: STA

ASHER: LAG

mom:  MITES!

STA lag mites.

Mom:  just like Stalactites, stalagmites are cave formations that form from the ground, not the ceiling.

MoM:  wanna know a little trick on how to memorize the difference between stalagmites and stalactites?

Asher: sure

Mom:  stalactites ends with the sound TITES.  So stalactites form at the ceiling and hang TIGHT onto the ceiling! 

Asher: hahah this is like one of our jokes.  Stalactites hang tight on the ceiling’

Mom:  Yup.  Stalactites hang tight on the ceiling. 

Mom: And stalagmites has the letter G in the middle.  So G stands for ground.  Because they grow from the ground.

Asher:  ooooh that’s a good one.  Stalaggggggggmites.  They grow on the ground. 

Mom:  and to our grown ups, you can visit our Instagram page @culturekidspodcast to look at some fascinating images of stalactites and stalagmites in the great blue hole!

Asher:  Let's learn about who discovered the great blue hole!

Mom: ah yes.  Well, it is believed that locals in Belize have known about this great blue hole for a very long time.  But it was made famous when an important French explorer and marine biologist named Jacque Cousteau brought his famous research ship, called the Calypso, to study the depths of this hole in 1972.  

Asher:  Jacque Cousteau is very famous especially to scuba divers and people that love the ocean.  He is considered to be the father of ocean exploration .

Mom: He sure is.  Mommy and daddy are avid scuba divers and we are very thankful for Jacque Cousteau because he created important equipment that allowed humans to explore and film parts of the ocean that had never been seen before. 

Asher; he also did a lot of great things to help keep our oceans clean and restrict hunting for whales. 

Mom:  he inspired the world to take good care of our oceans through lots of movies and books. When Captain Cousteau and his team sailed through the ocean in the Calypso, he helped all of us realize how much our oceans were being affected by pollution and global warming.  

Asher:  yeah so we have to keep our beaches clean. 

Mom: That's one example of taking good care of our ocean. Like we learned about in the Antarctica episode, the whole world is connected-from our oceans to our land and to every living being.  

Asher:  So let’s learn about the different marine animals we see in the great blue hole’

Mom:   Aside from the stalactites and stalagmites, there are multiple types of sharks spotted toward the shallow areas of the hole. Species such as the Caribbean Reef shark, bull sharks, black tip shark, nurse sharks and hammerhead sharks can all be found.

Asher:  So someone that is afraid of sharks should not go scuba diving in the blue hole.

Mom:  I wouldn’t recommend it.  The great blue hole is for experienced divers only. But, sharks do not harm scuba divers as long as the divers are respectful of the sharks' space.  

Asher:  I wanna be a scuba diver too’ can kids do it?!

Mom: yes! Kids can start learning as early as 8, and in some cases kids can start even earlier.  

Asher:  So because there are lots of cave formations like stalactites and stalagmites, there’s not a lot of fancy colorful corals going down the blue hole.  

Mom:  Yes, you won’t be finding much of that beautiful colorful sealife that you would see in other parts of Belize.  Because remember, the Great blue hole was a cave before.  But it’s still worth it to go diving to see the cool cave formations.

Asher:  Let's learn what it is like in the bottom of the blue hole!!

Mom:  Good question.  Well, not many scientists have visited the deepest part of the blue hole. The scuba divers like myself are only exploring the surface of the hole. 

Asher:  but have other people explored the deepest part of the hole 

Mom:  yes! So in 2018, an expedition lead by Erika Bergman of Aquatica Submarines, along with.the grandson of Jacque Cousteau, who’s name is Fabian Cousteau and Richard Branson, got to xplore the bottom of the great blue hole.  

Asher:  oooooh that’s exciting 

Mom: we’ll, they found some interesting things.  So remember we learned that the blue hole is about 400 feet deep?  Well, even though there is oxygen in the ocean at 400 feet deep and lots of living things can survive in that depth, because this is a big sinkhole,  there is a toxic layer of gas called hydrogen sulfide that gets trapped in this great blue hole- at around 300 feet.  

Asher:  Hydrogen sulfide is a colourless, toxic gas that smells like rotten eggs.  Hahahha

Mom:  This blanket of hydrogen sulfide is where the blue hole gets very spooky.  Once anything passes this layer of hydrogen sulfide, it can not survive.  This is the point of the hole where it gets really dark and black.  There is no oxygen beyond this point.  And when the submarine took them all the way down past this layer, I imagine it got really spooky because even when they looked up, they could not see the sunlight that was shining from the surface of the water because it was completely masked by this layer of hydrogen sulfide.

Asher:   But they found tons of dead conch shells, and even an underwater camera and a can of coke!

Mom: I guess some diver accidentally dropped their camera in the hole while diving!. And the coolest part is that even down at the bottom of the hole, they found stalactites there too.  

Asher: Spooky.  But very cool they got to explore safely and teach us all about the great hole.  I want to scuba dive there someday.

Mom:  Oh we definitely will, but you will have to dive at least 25-50 times at other locations before you can dive in the Great Blue Hole.

I don’t know if we’ll ever have the opportunity to take a submarine down to the blue hole, nor do I want to, but we can work on getting scuba certified first, and dive at the surface of the blue hole.  

Because remember, that toxic layer of hydrogen sulfide that’s at the bottom of the blue hole.

Oh yeah.

Mom:  That’s all for today but we never end our episode without some fun jokes!  Asher, do youw anan go fist?

Asher:  Why did the stingray have a chat with the scuba diver?

He wanted to have a manta-man talk

What do scuba divers use to cut seaweed?

A sea saw!

What’s a pirate’s favorite letter?

Arrrrrrg

Nope.  You may think it’s the Arggg but it’s the Cccc!!