Healthy Coral Found Inside Great Barrier Reef’s Biggest Blue Hole

Scientists have discovered an ancient and massive ‘blue hole’ in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which has caused a lot of excitement in the marine biology sector about what lies within.

Gentside reports that marine biologists dove 20-metres down into the huge hold, which had been discovered in one of the least explored parts of the reef, off the coast of Queensland on the north-east coast of the country.

Within the hole, they found healthy coral, a rare discovery given that the Great Barrier Reef suffers from widespread coral bleaching, which occurs where corals are put under stress from warming seawater, storms, or other external threat, and expel the algae that live within their tissue.

Marine biologist Johnny Gaskell posted about the Blue Hole on Instagram, stating that the geologists who discovered it believe it to be older than the famous Great Blue Hole in Belize in Central America, although not as deep.

The Great Blue Hole, the largest in the world, is over 300-meters across, and 125-metres deep, 100km off the coast of Belize. It is an island of coral, with a lagoon at its centre.

“It’s [sic] location is in one of the least explored parts of the Great Barrier Reef, over 200km from Daydream Island,” Gaskell commented on the social media post.

“To get there we had to travel overnight for 10 hours and time the tides perfectly … Was well worth it!”

He described the hole, saying that the walls inside the hole were similar to another site he had explored, but the Blue Hole was deeper and almost perfectly circular. He said that he dived to around 20-metres before hitting segment on the seabed, but that was great to see big, healthy coral colonies.

Mr Gaskell has found several blue holes in the reef. Often, the exploration starts by looking at Google Maps images of the reef and noticing something worth checking out.

A ‘blue hole’ is literarily a chasm in the ocean, and known as a sea hole. The formation appears to be the result of erosion, resulting in a crater covered by water. It is believed that the majority of these holes were formed during the Ice Age, and eventually filled with coral.

The dark blue colour of the hole is explained by the water in the hole going deeper than the surrounding seas.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living organism on the planet and can be seen from space, covering 344,400 square kilometres. 

The UNESCO World Heritage Site is one of the seven wonders of the natural world, and home to 1,625 species of fish, 3,000 species of molluscs 630 species of echinoderm (starfish and sea urchins), six of the world’s seven species of sea turtle, 133 species of sharks and rays, 30 species of whales and dolphins and many, many birds, sea snakes, crocodiles and other creatures.

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