“It’s Like Going Into Space” – Exploring The Ocean’s ‘Blue Holes’
Scientists with Mote Marine Laboratory will soon take part in an expedition exploring a massive and mysterious 'blue hole' on the ocean's floor. SNN's Valezka Nava reports.
(SNN/NBC News) — Scientists from Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory are set to take part in an expedition into a massive and mysterious “blue hole” on the ocean floor.
“It’s like going into space, and doing explorations out in space we have no idea what we are going to find in some of these areas that we’re going to,” says Mote Marine Program Manager Dr. Emily Hall.
The 425 feet deep blue hole, known as Green Banana Sink, is located about 50 miles southwest of Sarasota.
“The blue holes that we have in the Gulf of Mexico, that we are studying, are old springs or sinkholes that probably formed about 8,000 to maybe 12,000 years ago,” Dr. Hall explains.
The first reports of blue holes came from commercial fisherman and diver’s decades ago.
There are at least 20 blue holes off Florida’s coast, but nobody knows how many there really are.
“One thing we don’t know is we don’t know if they are connected to the land at all through our groundwater system or through caves or caverns and such. So that is one of the things we are trying to find an answer to and we also don’t know all the organisms that live there or enjoy these holes,” says Dr. Hall.
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