The desire to discover new worlds has taken
humans deep into outer space.
But planet earth still holds its own secrets
- with much left to be discovered in its liquid
depths.
The ocean covers 75% of the earth; we don't
know much about them.
We know about the surface of the moon and
Mars better than we know
about the actual seafloor.
In Florida, reports of large gatherings of
fish in the Gulf of Mexico
piqued the interest of divers.
They discovered an unlikely find beneath the
fish ... deep dark holes opening down into
the seafloor.
You're swimming along on the bottom and it's
very sandy.
You'll see some fish go by, some random organisms
around,
but then you approach these holes,
and all of a sudden, it's just booming with
life.
These openings, commonly called blue holes,
vary in size and depth.
Some have only a small entrance that s five
feet wide that opens up into a large room,
while others extend down over 400 feet into
the earth.
But the allure is, well you wonder, what's
a little deeper and a little deeper, and pretty
soon, you're in 150 feet or so.
And there's more to see.
So you want to go deeper and deeper and find
out what's going on.
These environments are so understudied, that
we don't even have the basic information to
just characterize them.
Now, multiple institutions and volunteer technical
divers are teaming up for expeditions to explore
these environments like never before.
It's definitely exotic.
The ability to really get in these systems
and make human observations, which is really
important, is pretty analogous to a space
exploration.
Nobody's taken measurements.
Nobody's looked at the fauna.
Nobody's looked at the geology or where they
flow.
It's all exploration.
We're interested in whether or not these holes
are connected to the mainland Florida.
Is there any connection through the groundwater
system?
Is any of the freshwater getting out to these
holes?
If they are a source of nutrients,
which could potentially be a possible source
of nutrients for red tide, we don't know.
Why are these deep holes in the seafloor?
And what makes them vibrant oases in an ocean
desert?