Story Behind the Story: Visiting Sacred Sinkholes in the Yucatan
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The VideoRay studied artifacts close up, without stirring up silt as divers fins often do. Medium Resolution photo (396KB) High Resolution photo (1.6MB) |
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Maya skulls lie in the debris of a cenote in the northern Yucatán
Peninsula. According to National Geographic magazine in October 2003, “The
victim may have been a human sacrifice, perhaps to Chac, the Maya
god of rain, who lived in the underworld. Probing 20 or so cenotes
in ancient Maya territory, expedition scientists concluded that small-town
Maya followed the religious customs of grand cities such as Chichén
Itzá, and that cenotes were vital to their sense of eternity.”
Medium Resolution
photo (406KB) |
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Expedition biologist Tom Iliffe of Texas A&M
University studies what survives in the submerged cave systems of
the Yucatán. According to National Geographic magazine in
October 2003, “Even deeper, where divers cannot go, living
fossils swim in oxygen-depleted waters below the halocline, the boundary
layer where lighter fresh water gives way to heavier salt water.”
Medium
Resolution photo (288KB) |
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Marcus Kolb, director of product development
for the 8-pound VideoRay, came to the jungle to test a new camera
and other accessories for the submersible.
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The National Geographic crew set up the VideoRay inside a long abandoned hacienda. Medium
Resolution photo (286KB) |
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The VideoRay, shown here with its YSI sonde (extending
from the lower front of the ROV), allowed the team to thoroughly
explore the
chemistry
of the halocline while
continuously
observing
and recording data and video from the surface without endangering
divers. Marcus Kolb noted, "We could identify the poisonous and
very dangerous hydrogen sulfide layer thickness and concentration which
proved invaluable
to the
divers." Medium Resolution photo (401KB) High Resolution photo (1.5MB) |