[Rockhounds] Deepest Blue Hole in the World Discovered. Scientists Still Haven’t Found the Bottom

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Researchers have found a blue hole they say is the deepest in the world—and
they’ve yet to find where it bottoms out. The formation is the Taam Ja’
Blue Hole in Mexico’s Chetumal Bay, and it has so far been measured to
1,378 feet deep, or 420 meters below sea level.

Blue holes are huge underwater sinkholes that appear on the seafloor when
the limestone bedrock collapses. Some of the most famous blue holes are off
Central America, especially Belize’s Great Blue Hole
<https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/great-blue-hole>. Taam Ja’ is near the
border of Mexico and Belize, off of Mexico’s Tamalcab Island and close to
several other blue holes in Chetumal Bay. Measurements of the hole’s depth
and how current circulates through it were published
<https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.1387235/full> this
week in Frontiers in Marine Science.

Taam Ja’ usurps the South China Sea’s Dragon Hole
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/26/researchers-just-discovered-the-worlds-deepest-underwater-sinkhole-in-the-south-china-sea/>
(also
called the Sansha Yongle Blue Hole) as the deepest known blue hole. The
Dragon Hole is about 990 feet deep, surpassing the third-deepest blue hole,
Dean’s Blue Hole, by over 300 feet. The Taam Ja’ Blue Hole is more than
twice as deep as Dean’s Blue Hole.

https://gizmodo.com/deepest-blue-hole-world-bottom-elusive-1851445625