The Blue Hole of Santa Rosa: Behind the Grate

Santa Rosa, New Mexico. In March 1976 two student divers left an open-water class at the Blue Hole and swam into the cave at the bottom of it. The search for them took six weeks and nearly killed a police diver, and the city sealed the cave with a steel grate. Forty years later a survey team opened it, mapped it to 194 feet, and lost one of its own. Told from the published record.

Chapters

0:00 The third chamber

0:42 A blue eye in the desert

1:56 March 10, 1976

2:48 The search

4:18 The grate

4:58 Opening it

5:51 March 26, 2016

6:51 What the survey found

7:40 Five rules

8:58 What the record says

Sources

Wikipedia: Blue Hole (New Mexico): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Hole_(New_Mexico)

Route 66 News, "The little-known tragedy of the Blue Hole" (21 September 2010): https://www.route66news.com/2010/09/21/the-little-known-tragedy-of-the-blue-hole/

ADM Exploration Foundation: Santa Rosa Blue Hole expedition: http://www.admfoundation.org/projects/santarosa/santarosaexpedition.html

NBC News, "Divers hope to unlock secrets of underwater cave closed for years" (2013): https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/divers-hope-unlock-secrets-underwater-cave-closed-years-8C11155362

Route 66 News, "Exploration diver dies in Santa Rosa's Blue Hole" (31 March 2016): https://www.route66news.com/2016/03/31/exploration-diver-dies-santa-rosas-blue-hole/

Wikipedia: Cave diving (the five rules; Sheck Exley, 1979): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_diving

Viking Dives, "The Great Grate Installation Project" (2024): https://vikingdives.com/the-great-grate-installation-project/

Full transcript:

https://pub-413c1fc5107e439dbec7a1f1c322ed45.r2.dev/diving/transcripts/ep01.vtt

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