SARASOTA -“It’s like going into space, and doing explorations out in space we have no idea what we are going to find in some of these areas that we’re going to,” said Staff Scientist, Program Manager at Mote Marine Laboratory, Dr. Emily Hall.
At the end of August, Mote will join researchers in an expedition to explore a mysterious 425 feet deep blue hole, otherwise known as Green Banana, located about 50 miles southwest of Sarasota.
“The blue holes that we have in the Gulf of Mexico, that we are studying are old springs or sinkholes that probably formed about 8,000 to maybe 12,000 years ago,” said Dr. Hall.
The first reports of Blue holes came from commercial fisherman and diver’s decades ago.
There are at least 20 blue holes off Florida’s coast, but nobody knows how many there really are.
“One thing we don’t know is we don’t know if they are connected to the land at all through our groundwater system or through caves or caverns and such. So that is one of the things we are trying to find an answer to and we also don’t know all the organisms that live there or enjoy these holes,” said Dr. Hall.
Mote Staff Scientist and Program Manager, Dr. Emily Hall says what is inside these holes remains a mystery.
“You basically get to the hole and you look down and its likes looking into an abyss and you don’t know what is down in there until you can get stuff down in there to look at it or what may come out,” said Dr. Hall.
In the last year, Mote, and other researchers have explored Amberjack, a 350 feet deep blue hole located 30 miles off Sarasota.
“So we have been able to characterize that fairly well chemically and biologically but that’s just one whole out of the many that are out there,” said Dr. Hall. “But that is one of our questions for this project, is to compare these holes and to see if they are extremely different for each other genetically, micro bialy, chemically, or if they are very much connected in the same, and that is just something we don’t know yet.”
