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Amazing blue holes
Mysterious remnants of the Ice Age
Dotted throughout the Bahama islands like the perforations in a big Swiss cheese are hundreds, if not thousands, of mysterious blue holes.
For years, these sinkholes have fascinated divers and scientists alike. In fact, recent explorations have found the remains of creatures, long extinct, that inhabited the islands hundreds of years ago.
Interesting as blue holes are, some Bahamians give them a wide berth. Legend has it that a terrifying monster called the Lusca may dwell in the depths of these structures, waiting to drag down divers, swimmers and even ships that venture too close.
Him of de hahnds
Known in Bahamian lore as “him of de hahnds,” the Lusca is said to be a 200-ft-long fantastical cross between a shark and an octopus.
During the age of piracy–the late 1600s and early 1700s–buccaneers reported seeing the monster or at least the giant whirlpools it supposedly created as it attacked. Ships caught in the whirlpool were grasped in the Lusca’s tentacles and dragged down to Davy Jones’s locker.
The Lusca myth continues to the present day. The SyFy Channel’s Destination Truth programme aired an episode filmed on Andros in 2009 that attempted to find evidence of the monster. The show claimed to have footage of “something large” passing by the camera during a night dive.
While physical evidence of the creature has never been found– putting it in the same class as Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster– believers say the currents found in some holes are known as the breath of the beast. When the Lusca breathes in, they say, water rushes into the caverns; when it breathes out, cold water gushes to the surface.
Stuart Cove, founder of Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas, says this “suck and blow” is a tidal effect that makes blue holes potentially dangerous places for inexperienced divers.
“[Diving there is] something you shouldn’t do without specialized training,” says Cove. He adds that local knowledge is essential because “You can really get sucked in with the tide.”
Cove says he can understand how old-timers believe these currents are signs of something large alive in the depths. As for seeing one, however, “they only live in the dark,” Cove says with a wink.
Because many Bahamians continue to avoid blue holes, they are a safe haven for conch, lobster, snapper, grouper and other tasty forms of marine life.
Formation of the holes
Blue holes formed slowly during the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, when sea levels were much lower than today. As rainwater filtered through fissures in the limestone, it hollowed out caverns down to that era’s much lower water table. When the polar ice melted and the sea rose again, the roofs of the caverns collapsed. Material from the roof forms a heap at the bottom of the hole, known as a talus mound.
There are three categories: sinkholes, which are large, round blue holes; fault-line fractures, which are very deep caves associated with local faults that run parallel to offshore canyons such as the 6,000-ft-deep Tongue of the Ocean; and lens-based blue holes, where a layer of fresh water rests upon denser ocean water.
The holes sometimes open up into spectacular underwater caves studded with stalactites, stalagmites and other mineral deposits known collectively as speleothems.
While blue holes are plentiful in The Bahamas and the Caribbean, they are found worldwide. The Great Blue Hole in the Ambergris Cays, Belize, measures a quarter mile across and 480 ft deep. Dahab’s Blue Hole, located just north of Dahab, Egypt, opens out into the Red Sea through a passageway known as the Arch. Although this tunnel is only 85 ft long, it contains a treacherous current that has taken the lives of more than 70 divers. It’s nicknamed the Divers Cemetery.
Notable Bahamian blues
Since the islands of The Bahamas are made up almost entirely of limestone, that makes them ideal for the formation of inland and marine blue holes.
Several are favourites with divers. The Lost Blue Hole, located off Rose Island near the eastern end of New Providence, is an exciting dive into a watery world inhabited by many different marine creatures. The entrance is 35 ft below the surface, but the hole itself drops to about 200 ft to the talus mound.
Grand Bahama’s Lucayan National Park is home to Burial Mound Cave–where the remains of Lucayan Indians were found–and Ben’s Cave, the latter being an entrance to one of the longest underwater cave systems in the world.
Andros has some 50 marine blue holes and more than 170 of them inland. These include the Stargate Blue Hole, accessible only by air. This hole was the subject of a National Geographic Explorer documentary film.
The world’s deepest blue hole can also be found in The Bahamas. Dean’s Blue Hole, located west of Clarence Town, Long Island, plunges 663 ft–so deep and clear that the Association Internationale pour le Développement de l’Apnée (AIDA)–the worldwide organization that governs free diving–holds its annual world championships at Dean’s Hole, where divers compete in several categories of diving on a single breath.
In April 2009, Sara Campbell of Great Britain set new female world records in three categories, including a dive to 314 ft in three minutes 36 seconds.
Time capsules
While The Bahamas’ blue holes are popular and exciting places to swim and dive, others are actually portals to the past.
Because some blue holes are filled with oxygen-free water, bacteria and fungi cannot survive there to attack organic material.
In 2004, Bahamas Caves Research Foundation director Brian Kakuk made what has been declared “the most significant fossil find in the history of the West Indies” during a dive in Abaco’s Sawmill Sink, a 110-ft-deep inland blue hole.
Kakuk found a perfectly preserved 3,000-year-old crocodile skull and a 2,500-year-old tortoise shell buried in the sediment there. His discovery led to the formation of the Sawmill Sink Project.
Over the past four years, the project’s research team has collected, catalogued and preserved 45 crocodiles, 10 new species of tortoise and a variety of birds, bats, lizards, snakes and plant life remains dating back at least 4,200 years. Human remains dated at 1,050 years old have also been found.
These discoveries captured the attention of the National Geographic Society, which awarded its largest-ever expedition grant in 2008 for further exploration and protection of the Sawmill Sink. The Society also produced a documentary on the blue hole in 2009.
“There is no place like it in the world,” says Dr Kenneth Broad of the Rosensteil School of Marine Sciences at the University of Miami.
Who knows what other fascinating finds will be made within blue holes in the future, providing that the explorers don’t run into a Lusca.
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WBN10 - Feature_BlueHoles
Amazing blue holes
Mysterious remnants of the Ice Age
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