Exploration of Quintana Roo's Basement - Caves

An article by Edith Sosa Bravo and Dr. Patricia Beddows in the August newslettter of Centro Ecológico Akumal (CEA):

From May 18–27 we were visited by Dr. Patricia Beddows with her team of friends and researchers. They came to carry out exploration of the cave systems and this is the story Dr. Beddows prepared about the goal of the trip:

We must all be crazy! For some silly reason, we have all decided that crawling around in some wet and mucky Yucatán caves would be a heck of a lot of fun, and a very rewarding way to spend our time. For some of us in the group, this will also be an intensive opportunity to build skills in caving and surveying. Part of my personal impetus for arranging this group adventure is that we can make a contribution to this region along the Caribbean Coast of the Yucatán Peninsula.

The coastline is experiencing rapid development and that includes directly above a number of poorly or completely undocumented cave systems. Part of the contribution is providing some training to some select people new to caving from local NGOs and research organizations (CICY–Centro de Estudios de Agua and CEA), part of the contribution is to get more field data for a scientific understanding of the region, and finally also the contribution is to provide more knowledge on what will truly be the basements of the villages, or the Sótano del Pueblo. The availability of data on these caves hopefully will serve local planners in considering the caves during the planning process to create safe communities within this karst landscape.

CEA's newsletter and article are also available in Spanish.