Next on Jonathan Bird's Blue World,
a deep and spooky sinkhole in the Yucatan, with
a mysterious false bottom!
Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
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This murky pond in the middle of a Yucatan jungle might not look like an exciting place
to go for a dive. But as I'm about to find out there's something spectacular lurking
beneath the surface.
My day begins at Phantom Divers in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. They will be taking me on
a dive to explore the sinkhole.
We load the van and set off on our adventure through the jungle on miles of dirt roads.
Finally we arrive at Muyal Ha. It looks like a pond, but it's an incredibly deep sinkhole.
I can only image what I'll find down there.
A sinkhole is a formation that used to be a cave, but a section of the roof fell in,
creating an opening to the sunlight above. Then it fills with water and sediment at the
bottom.
My guide is cave diver Carlos Estrabeau, but everyone calls him Charlie. We discuss the
dive and he tells me what to expect. Most importantly, it's deep!
Charlie shows me his favorite way to get in the water. But with scuba gear, I think I
will go off the dock.
We swim out into the middle of the sinkhole, and it's time to descend!
As we descend I can see that the water is not as clear as I was expecting. Because this
is a sinkhole and not a cave system, the water is a bit stagnant.
At the center of the sinkhole is a pile of debris including tree branches that have fallen
in from the surrounding forest, including a lot of leaves like this partially decomposed
one.
The light coming in from the opening above shows that the interior of the sinkhole is
much larger than the opening above.
Around the sides of the cavern, stalactites hang from the ceiling, including some really
big ones.
As I descend deeper, markings on the wall show where the water level used to be when
the water table was lower in the past.
There isn't much living down here, but a few fish survive in areas where the light penetrates.
Charlie directs me to a small opening in the wall. It's a little cave that just goes back
a few meters. He leads me in to investigate.
On the ceiling is a type of rock formation called popcorn where the calcium carbonate
has formed little round bumps.
Deeper in the cave, Charlie shows me the bones and teeth of and animal that probably died
in here thousands of years ago when the cave was dry.
They are encrusted with calcium and I will not move them since they have been unmoved
for so long.
Heading out of the cave, I follow Charlie into the light and then deeper down into the
depths of the sinkhole.
When we reach what appears to be the bottom, I'm in for a huge surprise. I can't believe
my eyes, when Charlie sinks into the bottom like it's a cloud!
It's not the bottom at all, but a layer of sulfur that hangs near the bottom in the
motionless water. I sink down with Charlie into the cloudy layer. Underneath it turns
reddish yellow. We're more than 100 feet deep.
On the bottom are thousands of years worth of decomposing leaves which are the source
of the sulfur cloud. No fish can live down here.
As I rise up out of the cloud, I find more wispy cloud layers to explore along the edge
of the wall.
It's really fun to swim through them, like an airplane soaring through the
clouds in the sky.
With our scuba tanks getting low, it's now time to head back to the surface. The dim
light from above is a welcome sight as I ascend.
Man, that was wild. The water in the bottom of the sinkhole is so calm that the sulfur
layer just lays there and it looks like sand. It looks like the bottom of the sinkhole,
but then you realize when you put your hand in it and your whole body will go down into
it like a could. That was just weird, I have never seen anything like that. So cool!
My dive in Muyal Ha sinkhole was an exciting combination of creepy and mysterious. It's
another example of the wonders of the blue world,
in a place where you would never expect it.
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