The Great Blue Hole is a giant underwater sinkhole which lies around 40 miles off the coast of Belize, near the center of the Lighthouse Reef. Given its name by British diver and author Ned Middleton, who was inspired by the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the circular hole is approximately 1,043 feet wide and 407 feet deep.

As the largest natural formation of its kind in the world, the Great Blue Hole has been a huge draw for many marine explorers seeking to discover its mysteries.

A UNESCO world heritage site, the Great Blue Hole is one of the most interesting and mysterious formations of its kind. A popular diving spot, this deep black hole swallows the diver in complete darkness, making divers feel as if they are exploring a “mythical underworld.”

Divers can spot denizens, Pederson’s shrimp, groupers, angelfish, neon gobies, purple sea fans, and corals such as elkhorn and brain corals in the shallower parts of the area. But even more fascinating than the hole’s wildlife is the history and legends surrounding it…

Little was known about the Great Blue Hole for many centuries, and it retained an aura of mystery as to how it came to be and what could be hiding in its depths. Locals held many superstitious beliefs about what hid at the bottom, including tales of monsters hiding within.

In the late 1960s or early 1970s, members of a diving expedition from Caye Caulker claimed to have sighted a giant “sea serpent” in the hole while scuba diving, which of course added to the general sense of intrigue surrounding it. But nobody had yet penetrated its depths.

But thanks to advances in submarine technology, the mysterious blue hole would soon be explored just a couple of years later. In 1971, the famous French diver/explorer Jacques Cousteau, credited for the invention of scuba diving, brought his research boat, the Calypso, to explore the Great Blue Hole.

After broadcasting his voyage on his iconic television series, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, the sinkhole was made world-famous. As the first explorer who attempted to plunge to its depths, Cousteau discovered some very important information…

Once Cousteau plunged to depths of about 145 ft, he was completely submerged in darkness. The oxygen levels were getting progressively lower, and the marine life gradually petered out until there was barely a living creature in sight.

That’s when Cousteau discovered that there were curious rock formations inside the giant hole. As it turns out, this was not simply a hole in the ocean floor. The rock formations were actually stalactites, which only form on dry land. That meant that the Great Blue Hole had once been a cave… above ground…

The cave, which contains giant stalactites, dripstone sheets, and columns, was flooded by rising sea levels between 15,000 and 150,000 years ago, during previous ice ages. Seawater had filled the cave in four stages, leading to the formation of “terraces” and stalactites whose mineral composition contains information on the earth’s history during this period.

While Cousteau managed to discover quite a bit about the Blue Hole, he wasn’t able to reach its floor. The question of what was lurking deeper than 145 ft. remained a mystery… until now…

And it wasn’t just anyone who decided to breach the depths of the Great Blue Hole. It was Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau himself. Having grown up aboard his famous grandfather’s expedition boats, Fabien grew up to follow in Jacques’ footsteps to become a marine explorer and conservationist in his own right.

And in November 2018, he set out to finish the “unfinished business” of his grandfather and find out what was at the bottom of the hole, once and for all. But he wouldn’t do it alone…

Fabien was joined by none other than world-famous billionaire Richard Branson. Branson, who rose to fame and fortune through growing his Virgin Records label into a business empire, is also a philanthropist with a particular interest in humanitarian and environmental issues, as well as a lover of extreme sports and adventure.

So it was only natural that he would join on this expedition to “get to the bottom” – in every sense of the word – of the Great Blue Hole.

Cousteau and Branson teamed up with Aquatica Submarines for the expedition, which included 20 dives conducted with the company’s Stingray 500 submarine led by Chief Pilot and Oceanographer Erika Bergman.

The expedition included a two-hour live broadcast on the Discovery Channel that had Branson and Cousteau descend into the depths of the Great Blue Hole. Fabien Cousteau had returned to the spot his grandfather had made famous with the technology of today, that would be able to descend the 400 feet to the bottom of the hole.

The team set out on its mission to collect scientific data, including a complete topographic sonar scan of the hole. Branson recalled, “We traveled about 10 minutes in the submarine into the Blue Hole and then started edging down the wall of the hole.

The first thing we came across was a massive wall of giant stalactites, which were breathtakingly beautiful.” Some of these formations measure up to 12 meters or 40 feet in length. Most divers never get beyond this point, but now Branson, Cousteau, and Bergman were about to go deeper than anyone had before.

As the team approached the bottom, they approached a layer of toxic hydrogen sulfide at 300 feet, which submerged into total darkness. “You lose all of that Caribbean sunlight and it just turns completely black, and it’s totally anoxic down there with absolutely no life,” explained Bergman.

Luckily, they were accompanied by another submarine, the Anabel, which lit their way as they descended into pure darkness, while using sonar technology to map the topography of the hole. Thanks to its bright light, the team would make some even more fascinating discoveries…

When the team was almost at the bottom, Bergman spotted never-before-seen stalactites at a depth of around 407 feet. “That was pretty exciting, because they haven’t been mapped there before, they haven’t been discovered there before,” she recalled.

But that was only the first of many discoveries the team would make. When they reached the very bottom of the hole, they saw some mysterious, tiny circular tracks and markings in the sand. What could have caused these strange markings?

The answer lay in the toxic hydrogen sulfide layer and the lack of oxygen in the floor of the hole. Conchs had probably fallen down into the hole, and the tracks marked where they had tried to make their way back up the hill, only to slide down again to their deaths.

Imagining this scenario can be somewhat melancholy, but the number of conch shells that were found indicated a healthy conch population overall. As of yet, no “Blue Hole Monster” was anywhere to be found…

At that point, the team realized that no “ocean monster,” nor any living creature could possibly survive the lack of oxygen and sulfide in the hole. That is, at least not the kind of monster that lived in the popular imagination. But they did find something that is arguably more troubling and frightening than any legendary monster.

As they crept along the floor of the Great Blue Hole at a depth of over 410 feet, the ocean explorers were dismayed by what they found: plastic bottles…

Branson, Cousteau, and the team were distraught and dismayed. Plastic had reached the bottom of the biggest sinkhole on the planet, contaminating one of the world’s most incredible wonders. Branson posted on his blog soon afterward;

“As for the mythical monsters of the deep? Well, the real monsters facing the ocean are climate change—and plastic,” Branson wrote. “Sadly, we saw plastic bottles at the bottom of the hole, which is a real scourge of the ocean. We’ve all got to get rid of single-use plastic.”

Unfortunately, it comes as no surprise that plastic was found in the Great Blue Hole – it is now a well-known fact that plastic is simply everywhere. Mass production of plastic started in the 1940s and ’50s, and studies found that around 8.3 billion tons of plastic had been made as of 2017 – the majority of which has been discarded.

Plastic has reached the most remote places on earth, from deep-sea sediments three miles below the surface of the ocean to Arctic sea ice and Swiss mountains.

The main goal of the expedition was successful. As Bergman reported, “We did our complete 360 sonar map and that map is now almost complete,” she said. “It looks really cool, it’s this mesh-layered, sonar scan of the entire thousand-foot diameter hole.”

The mapping of this unique site, however, was done with a purpose: it was done in support of Ocean Unite, an organization that promotes ocean conservation that is campaigning to protect at least 30% of the ocean by 2030.

It wasn’t only the plastic that caught the explorers’ attention. The Great Blue Hole, according to Branson, “…is proof of how oceans can rise quickly and catastrophically. Sea levels were once hundreds of feet lower. 10,000 years ago the sea level rose by about 300 feet when a lot of ice melted around the world.

At 300 feet down you could see the change in the rock where it used to be land and turned into sea. It was one of the starkest reminders of the danger of climate change I’ve ever seen.”

Most of Richard Branson’s time is now spent building businesses that aim to make a positive difference in the world, and one of his main focuses has been combating environmental decline.

He recently proposed a new plan to combat climate change which he calls a Clean Energy Dividend, which would “tax” companies’ fossil fuel use and emissions, and use the money to invest in generating clean energy through wind farms and solar panels, and developing breakthrough technologies such as low carbon fuels.

Branson says, “Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment.”

Indeed, it is now becoming clear to the world that the main hurdle we face in the coming centuries is that against climate change, pollution, and the depletion of the planet’s natural resources.

So, was the epic journey to the bottom of the Great Blue Hole a success? President of Aquatica Submarines Harvey Fleming certainly thinks so.

“The Expedition’s successes really mean that we were able to show the magic of the Blue Hole to the world and reinforce the messages of all the Expedition members that we must continue to work diligently to conserve our world’s oceans for future generations.” The magic of this eerie underwater world certainly comes across – all the more reason to fight to preserve it.

Following the expedition, Fabien Cousteau was passionately driven to spread the message. “The environment and conservation is the only investment in our natural resource ‘bank account’ in the future well-being of our children. Without a healthy planet, there are no such things as healthy people.

So it behooves us to highlight the fact that we must take care of our planet, the way we do for ourselves and our family. If we are going to imagine a brighter future for ourselves,” he said.

This echoes the sentiments of his legendary grandfather, Jacques, who saw the protection of oceans and nature as paramount to human survival.

“For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.” By returning to the Blue Hole that his grandfather made famous, Fabien has drawn attention to his grandfather’s message which, 50 years later, is more relevant – and urgent – than ever.

Sometimes when we look at something that seems familiar, our brain can trick us. We’ve put together a collection of everyday objects that, upon second glance, appear to be something else.

Upon first glance it seems obvious what’s going on here, several bowls and a pitcher were left in plastic wrap. But the truth is that what’s covering these plastic objects isn’t plastic wrap, but rather ice. It’s unclear what caused the ice to form this shape.

Taking a peek at a photo like this, it looks like something out of a video game, or a Lego set that someone had delicately placed to have even spacing from one another. In fact, this is an actual neighborhood where real people live. It’s called the San Buenaventura Complex in Mexico. Don’t believe us? It’s clear from the upper right-hand corner that the trees there are very much real. Only the neighborhood itself looks like something computer-generated.

This looks like something out of a movie about dinosaurs. What looks like a massive prehistoric creature making its way through a forest is actually a type of goose walking in very small shrubs. However, many scientists do believe that birds evolved directly from dinosaurs. So in a way this technically is a dinosaur that’s making its way through a forest, this dinosaur has just evolved in order to allow it to live more easily in the world today.

When we first looked at this photo we thought it was an image of a beautiful tropical beach somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. To our surprise, this is actually a picture of a geyser from a national park in Iceland. It’s almost hard to believe that this isn’t an aerial view of a beach. The only clue that it isn’t is the line of green algae that is growing where the water meets the shore, more indicative of a geyser.

Imagine stepping outside and finding this on your front lawn. We’d likely think that it was the hand of some horrifying monster that had somehow been left right before our very eyes. There’s no doubt that the white part of this looks like claws, the likes of which could do some serious damage if they were ever able to wrap around its prey. What this actually is though is a horseradish, that has somehow sprouted several heads at one time.

Just looking at this photo makes us want to sink our teeth into a delicious chocolate donut. Although we can tell from the photo on the right that there is something off about this particular donut. Either this donut is unusually big, or this guy is shopping at a bakery that caters primarily to giants. The truth is that neither is correct, and what this actually is is a strange mushroom whose colors somehow look like a tasty doughy treat.

It’s difficult to surmise what’s going on here without actually being told what’s happening. When we first saw it, we thought that someone had dropped a bunch of feathers in front of the camera. The person who posted it wrote that they thought it looked as if a flock of birds were going after his garage door. What it actually is is the ice that has frozen on this person’s car windshield, giving it a strange yet beautiful dancing effect.

This incredibly picturesque moment looks too perfect to be real life. But, like many things, the truth can be more surprising than the story itself. Even though this looks like someone hung a lovely photo on their wall, it’s actually a real-life window from the inside of a barn. It’s unclear where this barn is, but it certainly is in a lovely part of the world. Imagine waking up every morning and getting to see this unbelievably gorgeous view.

Many consider Yosemite National Park in California to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. Containing huge granite mountains, lush towering forests, and picturesque rivers and lakes, the place has long been a draw for adventurers, tourists, and many others who eagerly flock to experience its beauty. This moment, captured on camera, shows how there’s always something new to discover at this place, as this person managed to capture what looked like a stream becoming a waterfall.

Here’s something that’s so spooky that even though the photo was taken in the day time it still manages to send shivers down our spine. The image in the foreground of the photo is clearly a log, but upon second glance, it seems to also have a face, which appears to be wearing a hood. It’s a terrifying image, but imagine if it were night time and you shone a flashlight on this thing – we’d probably run away while screaming.

How could it be possible that this photo wasn’t taken during the day? One look and it would seem obvious that whoever took this photo, took it during daylight or at the very least evening hours. In fact, this photo really was taken at night. The photographer and their friend had gone outside to watch the lightning storm taking place in front of their house and happened to take a photo just as a bolt of lightning happened to strike.

Here’s a photo that would give anyone scared of the ocean even more nightmares. Looking at this photo it seems as though we’re seeing some monstrous fish about to eat the diver for nothing more than a midday snack. Fear not though, it’s not a giant man-eating fish, but rather the bow of a sunken ship being explored by a pair of divers. What’s grown on this ship is algae, meaning that in a way it is actually alive.

This photo manages to be both beautiful and strange at the same time. Two skyscrapers next to each other manage to give the impression that they are sharing energy with one another when in reality it probably has something to do with the lens of the photographer. It could also be that the building on the right is stealing all the energy from the building on the left, no doubt in order to get one step closer to world domination.

We’ve all heard of food trucks but few of us have seen a pastry truck with so many beautiful baked goods being displayed on shelves from the inside of a vehicle. What’s actually going on here is that the reflection on the glass of this coffee shop’s pastry section gives this truck the unusual appearance of having various pies and other treats for sale from its trunk. While it’s not real, it is giving us a pretty good business idea.

The first time we saw this photo our jaws dropped in horror. It looked like someone’s family pet had died and they’d decided to mount its head on their walls! What kind of people would do such a thing to a poor puppy? In fact, the truth is much less sad than that, and actually rather cute. This dog is actually sitting on a beige carpet and just happens to be looking up as it patiently waits for a treat.

Don’t say that we didn’t warn you if you think about walking along this pathway. Why might that be the case you ask? Well, this isn’t actually a pathway, what this is is a stream that has had so many leaves fall on it that it looks like solid ground. Hopefully, in real life, this stream is actually moving so that people can clearly see that it’s liquid. If not, then hopefully they have a towel waiting in their cars.

This seems like one of those photos that the government might try and confiscate so that they can tell everyone that it was a hoax. What appears to be Godzilla smashing his way through this town is actually a lizard that is crawling on someone’s windshield as they drive along the road. But with the clouds framing him in the background, this is one perfect shot. But we hope they stopped and helped this poor lizard off of their windshield.

It’s amazing how in nature, things can form such beautiful and familiar shapes all on their own. This rock, frozen in ice, was next to a river of running water, which allowed the ice to be slowly eroded and form into lovely shapes. This one in particular looks almost exactly like a human heart and, based on experts, seems to be about the same size as one more or less. Of course, it could always belong to something else…

Anyone who’s been camping understands the importance of bringing plenty of firewood. Not only because watching the fire dance around is something that is weirdly mesmerizing for people to look at, but it’s an important source of warmth and how else are you going to make smores? The firewood here actually came from a pallet, and it has been burnt in such a way that it seems like part of it is a group of birds gazing at the fire.

Yet again we have what appears to be a scenic photo hanging on a wall. What this actually is, is a window, and the person standing on the other side is taking a picture of what is actually happening outside. Unlike the previous photo, we know that this is in the Australian Outback, although exactly where in the Outback is a bit of a mystery. It was taken from inside an old ruin though, one that had a spectacular view.

This looks like something that would appear in a J.R.R. Tolkien book – some mythical or magical creature that just burst out of the ground. What gives it an even eerier effect is that the forest that it’s in is completely fogged in. Unfortunately for fans of the fantasy genre, this isn’t some magical creature emerging out of the forest floor. It’s just some grass growing over a stump. Something to watch out for on the Faroe Islands.

What looks like it could be something like concrete or cement under a microscope is actually something much bigger. Rather than being a microscopic look at the world, this strange grey pattern is actually an aerial view of New Delhi, the capital of India. Although from this view, New Delhi seems like a very unattractive city, it is actually home to some of the most beautiful buildings in the entire country including the Lotus Temple, India Gate, and Humayun’s Tomb.

It was popular for a lot of people as children to lay on their backs outside and look at clouds passing by, remarking on how many of them took the shapes of everyday objects. Heck, with how busy the world is today that’s something we’d all love to be doing now! Few clouds ever seemed to take on as much detail and precise shape as this one right here, which looks like a wave that’s about to crash on those mountains.

How crazy does this photo look right here? The light inside the clouds has formed an almost perfect circle with an exact geometric pattern underneath, giving us the impression that we’re looking at a massive UFO coming in for a landing. Unfortunately, meteorologists decided to burst our collective bubble by saying that what’s happening here is light reflecting off the clouds to create the shape of an alien spacecraft. Although with recent Pentagon admissions about UAVs, who knows what’s happening?

Looking into this rock it almost seems like it’s a tiny, frozen slice of the ocean. As much as we’d like to wish that was true, it’s actually a gem called an Ethiopian Welo Opal new gem. Named after the Wollo Province in northern Ethiopia, these beautiful gems have made Ethiopian opals some of the most desired in the world. The strange light patterns within the opals are just absorbed water particles, with this one having a uniquely beautiful design.

If anyone has ever wondered what a sculpture of a US Navy ship might look like, here it is. Clearly it has become something of a tourist attraction as these two kayakers have stopped to take a picture of this rock shaped ship. What’s remarkable as well is that the rock ship here seems to have been built to scale similar to that of a ship. This shows that whatever we can do, nature can do just as better than people.

This was taken by a tourist in Tokyo who, when looking out their window, might have thought that they were so high up in the air that they were getting an aerial view of the sprawling city. The truth is that this person was much closer to the ground, and the city that they thought they were looking at was actually a cemetery. The tombstones are differently shaped than what we’re used to in the States, and decorated with plants.

What appears to be nothing more than another landscape painting, is actually something much more authentic. This image is actually a photograph taken from the Namib-Naukluft National Park on the west coast of Namibia between the Atlantic Ocean and the edge of what is called the Great Escarpment. Boasting a diverse array of plant and animal life, this park is considered to be the largest in Africa and the fourth largest in the world, making it an obvious tourist destination.

If it seemed to you like this is a bad computer rendering of the real world, think again. This is a real-life photo of a parking lot in Hawaii on a day when objects show no shadows. The reason for this is because, at a certain time of the day twice a year, the sun is directly overhead. Scientists even have a name for days like these: they’re called zero shadow days, and it’s something that’s remarkable to see.

Upon first glance, you might be tempted to believe that whoever made this bag knows a thing or two about working with needle and thread. Or, more likely, there are two cats sitting really still in the bag. We can confirm that the reality is, in fact, the latter. The person who posted this photo on Reddit wrote the following caption: “Our two cats look like they were cross-stitched onto the carrier.” Sometimes, something is so good to be true, because it is.

Looking at this image reminds us of going to an astronomy museum to look at the incredible nebula floating in space. A nebula is the resulting cloud of dust and chemicals that are left after a star explodes. But this isn’t that. Rather, if you look at the bottom of the picture it’s obvious that there’s smoke coming out of something burning. This was actually a firework display that was captured on film at one perfect moment.

If you thought that the wave in the sky was remarkable, then this photo is truly something out of this world. When we first saw this photo we were convinced that it had to have been photoshopped. After all, when has anyone seen clouds looking so perfectly like an ocean on a stormy night? The truth is that it just happens to be coincidental, this is an actual cloud formation looking like some moving liquid.

Here’s something that looks too incredible to be real. But if there’s one thing that we’ve learned from all these photos is that you don’t need human beings in order to make something beautiful. Nature can do all of that all by itself. Here is a perfect example of that, sitting just above this forest is the perfect combination of cloud and light. These clouds look like they could either be rolling sand dunes, or ocean waves that are calmly flowing.

Upon first glance, this looks like some sort of exotic caterpillar that is slowly making its way along this stick. But once you take a moment and zoom out, it’s obvious that this isn’t one creature, but nine! Rather than being bugs, it’s nine birds that are all sitting on this branch incredibly close to one another. Maybe for warmth, maybe for comfort. Either way, together they all manage to look like something much bigger than just one of them.

Looking at this, we think everyone could agree that it looks like a slice of the sky that has fallen to the Earth. All the times anyone has wished they could capture a slice of the sunset and take it home with them, this is their chance. That’s not what it really is though, what it is is yet another incredible opal, which has soaked in water. That water is able to reflect light in various colors creating incredible images.

If you haven’t caught on by now, every time something on this list looks like an aerial shot of what should be something massive – it’s not. This picture is no different. It looks like we’re looking down at a tropical island from an airplane or helicopter, but the truth is far more surprising. In reality, this is nothing more than a small, mossy rock sitting in the middle of a frozen lake giving the impressions of waves splashing onshore.

If we were walking by this house one morning and saw this through the second story window we would probably panic and immediately call the fire department. So why, after they got there, would the fire department be so annoyed that we called them? The reason is that this isn’t actually a fire. Instead, it’s the reflection of the sun rising from behind a tree. We guess next time we should’ve stopped and double-checked if there was any smoke rising.

Before the concept of Godzilla ever came to fruition filmmakers had another creature in mind, the giant lobster who would descend from space in order to take over the world. Okay so none of that is actually true, but that was definitely the first thing that came to our minds when we first saw this photo. In reality, this is nothing more than a lobster sitting at the bottom of a bucket. But that reflection does look like North America.

How strange would it be if this anteater happened to find a barrel of some radioactive fluid, stuck his front leg in, and by the time he pulled it out it had transformed into a panda? We’re guessing that’s not what happened although if someone wants to make a comic book about that please contact us. We’d love to talk. The reality is sadly much more boring. It’s front leg just has a strange hair pattern which completely surprised us.

It’s photos like these that make people, in part at least, doubt UFOs. Not because they don’t look real. This one looks just like a UFO about to beam somebody up to their alien spacecraft, but because at the end of the day most of them are easily explainable. In this particular instance, it’s a car door that has tricked our eyes into thinking we’re looking at a UFO. Between the rain and the reflection, it makes for a convincing image.

Just looking at this blue curved image right here, it does seem as if we are getting a satellite’s view of the Earth from above. But upon second glance, we can see that above the curve, there’s a brick wall so clearly we’re not looking at the Earth. What we’re actually looking at is the roof of a car that has frost on it. The frost gives the “water” that uneven look and it’s completed by the ray of light.

Looking at this picture, we’re reminded of all those pictures of apartments that we’ve seen that we can’t afford. The architecture seems so unique, modern, and well put together that we can easily imagine one of our favorite celebrities purchasing a place like this in order to host fancy cocktail parties. What it actually is is the inside of a guitar, and upon second glance we can see the guitar strings above the opening. Not sure we can afford it though.

This is a terrifying image and something that looks like it belongs in a Gothic museum somewhere in Europe. Yet once again, mother nature is able to create something of stunning beauty that human beings can only marvel at. This is actually a real life, active lava pit, and the strange-looking images that look like human bodies are thankfully not actually that. It’s cooled lava that was stopped in its place while trying to flow into the pit.

This is a lovely and serene image and looks like a picture of the night sky. If you wanted to know what it actually is, you’d have to point your camera not up, but down. This is actually the reflection of a puddle, which has managed to look like a night sky. It seems like pollen or some other plant residue has fallen onto the puddle which gives us the impression we’re looking at billions of stars in the sky.

Currently, scientists are scouring our galaxy to find any planets that are “Earth-like” in nature. This means the same size, a solid planet, that’s in a star system similar to our own and just at the right spot for water to exist in its liquid form. This looks like it could be a list of those discovered planets. However, it’s actually the bottoms of frying pans that have been used and burnt, creating these incredibly beautiful images.