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WONDERS OF NATURE
Blue Holes. Nature miracle
The Bahamas are located in the south of the infamous Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps that is why they have always been notorious among sailors. Since the time of Columbus, the first European to see these coral islands, hundreds of ships have been buried here. Reefs and rocks, treacherous currents and whirlpools, storms and fogs have always threatened and threaten captains who dared to chart their course in these treacherous and sinister waters. But one of the most formidable dangers lurking here for boats and small craft is hidden under water off the coast of Andros, the largest island in the Bahamas. It is all the more formidable because even the most experienced sailors have not seen anything like it in any other area of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbthe World Ocean. Andros Island is low and, like its neighbors, is a flat limestone island with winding coasts, whimsically dissected by bays, straits and headlands and surrounded by small islands and coral shallows. When you look at the sea washing Andros through the porthole of an airplane, then among the greenish-turquoise coastal shallow water you suddenly find in several places dark, almost ink-colored, rounded spots. These are the famous Blue Holes, the "blue holes" of Andros.
From the point of view of geology, these "holes" are not unusual. In ancient times, when the sea level was lower, rains and streams washed deep passages in limestone uplands, which later became islands and shallows. Now that the sea level has risen, the gaping openings of the shafts leading to the flooded caves stand out from the general background, since the waters of the deep sea are always darker than in shallow places. But the dark glory of the Blue Holes did not come from the depth of these failures. At high tide, after the waves crash over the barrier reef that surrounds Andros, the water around these blue spots begins to move in a circle. A whirlpool forms above the opening of a deep underwater mine, drawing everything that floats on the surface into its greedy mouth: algae, wood chips, boards, barrels, fishing boats and ship lifeboats. Objects that disappeared without a trace never appear on the surface, and it is no wonder that eyewitnesses who miraculously managed to avoid death in "blue holes" tell chilling stories about them. And the fact that at low tide the picture is repeated in reverse order: powerful fountains of water erupt from the Blue Holes, sometimes with chips and debris, does not prevent the storytellers from sticking to their line. Deep, deep, in the blue abyss of the Blue Holes, they say, lives the terrible underwater monster Lusk. Neptune endowed her with the tentacles of a giant octopus and the mouth of a huge shark, and the size of the monster is such that it can suck entire ships into its insatiable womb. With long tentacles, Luska drags victims into her lair, grinds them up in a terrible mouth and greedily devours them, and when she is sated, she regurgitates what is left. Despite the completely unusual nature of this mysterious phenomenon, it remained unexplored almost until the end of the XNUMXth century. Not that it did not attract attention, on the contrary, rumors about him walked around all the fleets. But the gloomy glory of the Blue Holes, coupled with documented cases of the disappearance of boats and people in the "blue holes" somehow did not stimulate divers and divers to better study the mysterious marine phenomenon. To understand what is happening on Andros, oceanologists had to involve aerial photography, scuba divers, geologists, geographers, and speleologists. As already mentioned, Andros is the largest of the Bahamas. In length, it stretches for one and a half hundred kilometers, and in width it reaches sixty. Andros is located approximately in the middle of a vast limestone shoal in the ocean - the Great Bahama Bank. It is surrounded by shallows on three sides, and from the east there is a deep trough called the Tongue of the Ocean. The depth of the trough-trough is almost two kilometers, and many large caves, grottoes and tunnels have formed in the walls of this underwater canyon. The Blue Holes are usually located near the edges of the Ocean's Tongue, among coral shallows. And on Andros itself, in the thick of tropical forests, there are rounded dark lakes similar to "blue holes", very deep and distinguished by a strange feature: their fresh water is replaced by salt water at a depth, and you can catch both lake and sea fish in them. It was they who gave the key to unraveling the mystery of the Blue Holes. It turned out that the Bahamas are a protruding part of a large system of limestone hills that formed millions of years ago. During this time, a huge network of karst cavities and tunnels managed to form in them. During the last glaciation (ten to twenty thousand years ago), the ocean level was one hundred and twenty meters lower than it is now. The caves, formed in the thickness of limestone, ended up on land and actively continued to grow. Some of them connected with the surface, turning into open mines. In our time, when the sea level became higher, its water filled the mines through underwater tunnels. From above, fresh rainwater accumulated above the sea water, creating a kind of "two-story" lakes. At high tide, sea water near the coast of the Address is higher than the groundwater level in the limestone layer of the island. Then, under the pressure of salt water, the level of the lakes rises, and the "blue holes" work like pumps, drawing sea water into their insatiable mouths. At low tide, fresh water is already above sea level and presses on the underlying salty layers, pushing their water out of the holes. This is how all-devouring whirlpools and "sea fountains" appear, and at the same time heart-rending sea myths. Exploring underwater caves was no easy task. Scuba divers had to maneuver in narrow passages between stalactites and stalagmites, risking damage to the equipment. At the same time, there was always a danger of going astray and then not finding the right tunnel leading to the surface. In addition, sharks of various types and sizes often visited the caves, which, of course, also did not make the work easier, although the predators did not have octopus tentacles, like Luska. Swimming in the dark tunnels was also hampered by strong tidal currents. But it turned out that even in such an inhospitable environment, many marine life perfectly took root. At the very bottom, small nurse sharks often lie, waiting for a gaping fish. Crabs and crayfish find shelter in the cracks and hollows of the rocks. Beautiful sine-lilac and blue sponges settle on stones in the depths of the "blue holes", and shoals of fish prefer to stay near the border of fresh and salt waters. Here, on the surface of a layer of denser sea water, small organic remains linger, so to speak, "crumbs from dinner" of the inhabitants of the upper floor. But unraveling the Blue Holes' suction mechanism doesn't mean research on this unique natural wonder is over. The blue ocean abysses still hold many secrets. One of them was opened to scientists in 1991. Exploring a large lake in the depths of Andros, called the Sacred Blue Hole by the Indians, they found many human skulls and whole skeletons at the bottom of the reservoir. It remains to be seen whether the lake served as a burial place for the Indians who inhabited the island in the pre-Columbian era, or whether scientists have found the remains of victims of ritual sacrifices. Perhaps someday it will be possible to equip one of the amazing "blue holes" with lighting fixtures and direction indicators, and lovers of risky adventures will be able to dive into one of the lakes on Andros and emerge from the dark blue abyss at the side of a boat waiting in the sea. In the meantime, tourists can only admire the mysterious and incredible spectacle of powerful fountains gushing from the sea, recalling the eerie legend of a formidable and implacable underwater monster only from the board of an ocean liner... Author: B.Wagner
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