MEXICO:Cave divers in Mexico have discovered what they claim is the world's largest submerged cave system - effectively an underground river - beneath Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Stephen Bogaerts and Robbie Schmittner had spent four years exploring whether the Sac Actun system links to other cave networks before they made the final connection which revealed a single system that is 95 miles long.
The two divers entered the system separately on January 23rd and worked their way through huge chambers and tiny tunnels to meet up at the connection point they had always believed they would find. Mr Schmittner was carrying a bottle of champagne, which they left secured to the spot.
"It was like putting a flag up on Everest," said Mr Bogaerts, who pointed out that it took some 500 dives of several hours each to get to that point. "We're still walking on air."
The diver was speaking by phone from his home in the coastal town of Tulum, a tourist haven beside the Caribbean which in recent years has become a Mecca for the international cave-diving community.
The 42-year-old explorer says that putting Sac Actun at the top of the global table of submerged cave systems is far from the end of the story. He and Mr Schmittner are working on exploring whether Sac Actun connects to a 58km-long system called Dos Ojos. It could yet prove to be the longest cave system of any kind - a record held by the 360-mile dry Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky, USA. - (Guardian Service)