blue hole
A blue hole is a large marine cavern or sinkhole, which is open to the surface and has developed in a bank or island composed of a carbonate bedrock ( limestone or coral reef). Their existence was discovered in the late 20th century by fishe ...
located in
The Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the ar ...
in a bay west of
Clarence Town
Clarence Town is a town in the Bahamas. It is located on Long Island.
Clarence Town is the capital of Long Island and has a population of 86 people as of 2010.Long Island and is the world's second deepest, after the Dragon Hole in the
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phi ...
, with a depth of .
Formation
A
blue hole
A blue hole is a large marine cavern or sinkhole, which is open to the surface and has developed in a bank or island composed of a carbonate bedrock ( limestone or coral reef). Their existence was discovered in the late 20th century by fishe ...
is a water-filled
sinkhole
A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as ''vrtače'' and shakeholes, and to openi ...
with the entrance below the water level. They can be formed in different karst processes, for example, by rainwater soaking through fractures of limestone bedrock onto the watertable. Sea level here has changed: for example, during the glacial age during the
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...
epoch (
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...
), some 15,000 years ago, sea level was considerably lower.
Dean's Blue Hole is roughly circular at the surface, with a diameter ranging from . After descending , the hole widens considerably into a cavern with a diameter of .