People in Belize think it should be one of the seven wonders of the world. Dive boats visit it every day. It is protected by the Belize Audubon Society and is a Belize National Monument. It became a World Heritage site in 1997. Jacques Cousteau took the Calypso and his one-man submarines into the hole in 1972 to examine stalactites suspended from overhanging walls. The Great Blue Hole is surrounded by shallow water of Lighthouse Reef Atoll, a nearly perfect circle in the middle of a shallow reef. The atoll is located ~96 km east of the Belize mainland. It is not an easy place to reach.

Why this blue hole? The Belize Great Blue Hole is located far from industrial sources of aerosols but is well within the area affected by silica- and clay-bearing African soil dust. African dust is deposited in the Caribbean mainly between June and October. The hole thus serves as a giant sediment trap where the overall sedimentation rate is slow and layering is preserved due to anoxic conditions. A high rate of atmospheric deposition relative to normal shallow-marine sedimentation should make it easier to identify and separate African soil dust from local carbonate mud. If all goes as planned, these cores will provide the centerpiece of a study aimed at determining the geologic history of dust deposition over the past few thousand years.