Scientists discover the second largest blue hole in the world in Mexico

Recently, Mexican biologists discovered a “blue hole,” considered the second largest in the world. It is a giant cavity that can span the length of some skyscrapers in the Aztec country.

According to experts, these underwater sinkholes could have formed during the last years of the Ice Age, which began about 110,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago, according to Conabio (National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity in Mexico). ).

It is believed that these ecological points concentrate a large amount of plant and animal life.

The second largest blue hole in the world measures 900 feet deep (more than 270 meters), approximately the same length as Mexico City’s Torre Mayor, which measures 225 meters and is considered one of the largest skyscrapers in the world. metropolis.

The sinkhole was identified with the name Taam Ja’, which means “deep waters” in Mayan, in Chetumal Bay, on the so-called Yucatan Peninsula.

It is worth mentioning that Mexico’s blue hole is not at the level of the deepest in the world, located on the coast of China, and which has a depth of 987 feet (more than 300 meters), almost the same length as the Chrysler Building. , located in New York City.

It was in 2021, when Mexican researchers revealed the topography and sampling of Taam Ja’; but it was not until recent months that they revealed its formal existence in a new study that detailed the maximum recorded depth of 274.4 meters below sea level, according to members of ECOSUR (Colegio de la Frontera Sur).

Curiously, Mexican researchers managed to find this large blue hole, after fishermen in the area reported that there was a kind of “cenote” in the sea. Their exploration by local divers has resulted in fatal consequences, since not even scholars have had more knowledge of them due to their “lack of accessibility, unknown distribution and abundance,” says the ECOSUR study.

So far, it is known that the great blue hole has an “almost circular shape”, and “steep sides with slopes of up to 80 degrees”, which causes it to have a “conical shape”. To evaluate its composition, the researchers used pulses of reflected sounds, which helped them define how the upper surfaces were shaped.