The Hole at the Bottom of the Sea

What country is famous amongst divers for the largest Blue Hole in the world?

Somewhere off the coast of Central America, in the warm turquoise waters of the Caribbean, there is a near-perfect circle of deep blue — a hole in the ocean floor so large and so deep that it looks like a portal to another world.

It's called the Great Blue Hole. And it's in Belize.

A Cave That Drowned

The Great Blue Hole is 318 metres wide and 124 metres deep — roughly the size of three football fields across and as deep as a 40-storey building. But here's the remarkable part: it wasn't always underwater.

Over 15,000 years ago, when sea levels were much lower, this was a dry limestone cave. Stalactites grew from its ceiling. Then the ice age ended, the seas rose, and the cave flooded — leaving behind this extraordinary circular void in the ocean floor.

Jacques Cousteau Made It Famous

The Blue Hole was known to local fishermen for generations, but it was Jacques Cousteau who put it on the world map. In 1971, he sailed his famous ship Calypso to Belize and declared the Blue Hole one of the top five scuba diving sites in the world. In 2012, the Discovery Channel ranked it the number one most amazing place on Earth.

In 2018, a submarine expedition finally mapped the interior in 3D — and made a sobering discovery: the bodies of two divers who had gone missing years earlier were found at the bottom. Out of respect, the crew left them there, buried at sea in the place they loved.

Why Belize?

Belize is a small Central American country — often confused with Bolivia or Brazil by those who haven't visited. But for divers, it's one of the most celebrated destinations on Earth. The Great Blue Hole sits within the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the second-largest barrier reef in the world after Australia's Great Barrier Reef.