Divers have uncovered some disturbing secrets after finally reaching the bottom of a 400 foot Great Blue Hole.
The famous hole in the Caribbean Sea was first brought to global attention by French explorer and naval officer Jacques Cousteau.
The explorer was a groundbreaker in his field, becoming the co-inventor of the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA).
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Cousteau’s work has been continued by his grandson Fabien, who decided to take on the feat of venturing down into the hole back in 2018.
Virgin boss Richard Branson joined him on the trip, which saw them traveling down in two submarines.
There, they made some incredible and rather disturbing discoveries.
Below 300 feet, the water was dark and lifeless but at the bottom, they uncovered some hidden secrets.
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Along the bottom of the put was discarded trash, including a two liter plastic bottle.
There was also a lost GoPro which had some vacation photos captured on it.
However, another find was made that nobody expected.
Two bodies were uncovered lying on the seafloor.
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These were the bodies of explorers who had gone missing on a previous expedition.
While the team along with Fabien and Branson made the decision that it was best to leave the corpses where they were, they did inform the Belize government.
The hole was also filled with a series of caves that were full with hanging stalactites, which are mineral formations found on the ceilings of caves.
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If you visualize a stone icicle then you will have a clearer idea of what they look like.
The stalactites usually form in caves above water level so seeing them down below the water surface in depths of 400 feet was rather unusual.
This indicated to the explorers that the hole had once been on dry land.
Writing on the Virgin website, Branson reflected: “The Blue Hole is made of a complex system of caves that once formed on dry land. It is proof of how oceans can rise quickly and catastrophically.
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“Sea levels were once hundreds of feet lower. 10,000 years ago the sea level rose by about 300 feet when a lot of ice melted around the world. At 300 feet down you could see the change in the rock where it used to be land and turned into sea.”
He said it was ‘one of the starkest reminders of the danger of climate change [he has] ever seen’.