Mexico has a new record for world’s longest underwater cave system, a 216-mile string of underwater spaces deep enough to sink Big Ben and nearly as long as the distance between New York and Washington.
The discovery of a passage linking the Yucatan’s 164-mile Sistema Sac Actun with the 52-mile-long Sistema Dos Ojos puts it in the lead over the 168 miles of Mexico’s Sistema Ox Bel Ha in eastern Mexico.
The discovery was not a surprise: experts had suspected a connection for years and had been searching for it. The discovery was made by Gran Acuifero Maya, a project that focuses on studying and safeguarding the underground waters of the Yucatan, where openings to the surface, called ‘cenotes’ played an important role in Mayan life. Some of the cenotes are connected to important Mayan sites, including Chichen Itza and Tulum.
With all that, though, Sac Antun is only #2 among known cave systems, even though it’s the longest underwater. First place goes to Mammoth Cave in the U.S., which stretches at least 405 miles under Kentucky, but the new find jumps it ahead of Jewel Cave in South Dakota.
