Jonathan Bird's Blue World: Stargate Blue Hole

• Report rights infringement
• published: 13 Jan 2014
• views: 251766

In a remote part of Andros Island in the Bahamas, a deep crack in the ground leads into a beautiful and stunning underwater cave system. Jonathan joins a veteran cave explorer to plumb the crystal clear water in the depths of Stargate Blue Hole. ********************************************************************** If you like Jonathan Bird's Blue World, don't forget to subscribe! You can buy some Blue World T-shirts & Swag! http://www.blueworldtv.com/shop You can join us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/BlueWorldTV Twitter https://twitter.com/BlueWorld_TV Instagram @blueworldtv Web: http://www.blueworldTV.com ********************************************************************** Most people, when they think about the Bahamas, imagine sandy beaches, blue water, and colorful coral reefs. What they generally don’t think about is this: limestone. The Bahamas are islands built on a base of limestone—the skeletons of ancient coral reefs accumulated over millions of years. Bahamas limestone often looks like Swiss Cheese, because over thousands of years, slightly acidic rainwater has dissolved holes in it. Sometimes those holes get quite large and fill with water. Hence, they become what are known in the Bahamas as Blue Holes. The Blue World team has traveled to the island of Andros in the Bahamas, to explore one of the most famous Blue Holes in the world: Stargate. Our home away from home? Small Hope Bay Lodge on North Andros. In spite of a strong breeze, flying is the only practical way to reach Stargate. The 25 minute flight takes Jeff and Tim over the beautiful and remote landscape and coastal ocean of Andros Island. Soon, they land on South Andros. At the Congo Town airport, they unload the scuba gear from the airplane. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but Stargate turns out to be practically in the middle of a neighborhood near Congo Town! It even has a sign. Jeff is pointing out a crack in the limestone, sometimes called a fault or a fracture. It’s actually part of a series of fractures stretching more than ten miles, formed during the last ice age when sea levels were lower and stresses within the rock caused some of it to break. Deep underground, this fracture is filled with water. And we’re about to dive inside it! Lowering my expensive underwater camera and lighting system down into the water with a rope makes me a little nervous. Jeff leads us down into the weird, swirly halocline, a layer where the fresh water at the surface mixes with the salt water below. Jeff points out ancient coral, clearly identifiable. This is the stuff that makes up most of the limestone of the island. As I examine the limestone carefully, I can clearly see Star coral….and Brain coral. The overhanging walls of the cavern are covered in flowstone and stalactites. Todd backlights a stalactite to show its shape. Flowstone is a type of formation formed by flowing water in a dry cave, leaving behind delicate limestone formations that look like molten wax on the side of a candle. This formation took thousands of years to form. Looking down, I can see the bottom of the cave at 100 feet but as we progress down this narrow passageway, the bottom is dropping out of sight. It drops to 200 feet, way too deep for us today. We stay near the top of the passageway to keep as shallow as possible. The walls of the cave are decorated in all directions with beautiful and delicate flowstone. The whole place looks like an ornately decorated wedding cake covered in frosting! It’s hard to believe that during the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower, this massive chasm was dry and filled with air. Dripping water from rain up above made all these fantastic decorations. Next we swim into a huge space where the walls bow outward. The water is so clear that the divers look astronauts hovering in space. Only their bubbles betray the presence of water. Remember that crack in the ground up above? Well right now our dive team is about 120 feet directly underneath it. That tiny little fault line I stood across opens up into this massive submerged chasm! Soon we approach the end of the tunnel. We reach a place where rocks have fallen in and blocked the passageway. This is where we turn around and head back. This is an excellent time to concentrate on filming close-ups of the delicate formations on the wall, such as these exquisite stalactites that look like icicles of stone. Jeff points out an incredible flowstone formation that Todd helps me film using his lights. This formation is so thin, that light passes through it like a lampshade.