Great Blue Hole Belize

We are a site that is primarily about the Great Blue Slot, that's true. But we also thought we'd share some information on an amazing natural wonder of the world called the Great Blue Hole in Belize.

The Bottom of The Great Blue Hole

This is famous among the scuba diver community. It's a huge underwater sink-hole in Belize that is full to the brim with marine life and where you can dive in crystal-clear waters.

Divers in the Great Blue Hole will swim with nurse sharks, reef sharks, giant groupers, and Blacktip sharks. The Great Blue Hole is located near the centre of Lighthouse Reef, a small reef 100 km from the Belize mainland.

The hole has a diameter of more than 300m and is 125m deep. It forms part of the Barrier Reef Reserve System, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The hole was carved out of rock during the last ice age when the seal level was lower, much as limestone caves are formed today. After the last ice age, when sea levels came back up again, coral grew in the old caverns forming steep sided walls and these characteristic sink holes. Many of the drop-offs on the edge of the Belize atolls are thousands of feet deep.

Many of the atoll islands were inhabited by the Mayans for over 1,000 years. Then from 1528 to 1532 the Spanish arrived and started mapping the reefs of Belize and the Yucatan peninsular.

The English then arrived and occupied the territory in the 1750s. An English pirate John Glover, who used one of the reefs as a hideaway. It's now called Glover's Reef.

The atolls became famous in the seventies when Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso explored the Great Blue Hole and other Belize atolls.

The Great Blue Hole has a twin sister inland- a smaller formation simply known as the Blue Hole. This land locked sinkhole is located 12 miles south of the City Of Belmopan in the centre of Belize.