The cenotes of Yucatan

If you look at a map of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, a keen eye may notice that although it is located in the tropics, and therefore receives quite a bit of rain in its wet season, there are no major lakes or rivers to speak of, especially to the north.  There is water there, though, flowing underground through aquifer and cave systems known as cenotes.

Since Mayan times, people living in the Yucatan have relied on the cenotes as their source of drinking water.  Growing population in the region have obliged the government to make environmental assessments of the area, and that hydrological surveys of the cenotes.  As a result, the full extent of these underground water systems are becoming apparent.  Two of the systems in the region – Ox Bel Ha and Sac Actun – trade the title of the longest underground river in the world, each having over 180km of explored passageways. You can see an older map of Ox Bel Ha at the site of the group who did the first explorations.

Exploring a cenote, image from Cave-Exploration.com

Exploring the cenotes combines the dangers of diving with the challenges of caving.  The air in their tanks limit how long they can remain in the cave at one time, and the dark, narrow passages give many chances to become lost or stuck.

Exploring a cenote, image from Cave-Exploration.com

The explorers have found numerous relics in the caves, some supposed to be significantly older even than the Mayan culture, perhaps as old as 9,000 years.  They are thought to have been the centre of religious traditions in the area, with the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza possibly the site of human sacrifices to their rain god Chaac.

The cenotes have a connection to an even earlier history than that, far earlier than anything from human history.  In the north of the peninsula, many of the cenotes form a distinct ring, following the rim of the Chicxulub crater, the site of an asteroid impact from some 65 million years ago, and a candidate for the cause of the great dinosaur extinction.

Prehistoric geology, ancient human rituals, the encroachment of modern society.  Could the Mayans have been sacrificing not so much to a god in the skies as to a predator under their feet?  A predator that has been there for millions of years.  Shades of Colour out of space, perhaps.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

In the middle of the north Pacific ocean is a region that is estimated to be anything between twice the size of Texas up to the size of the African continent containing some 2,500,000 tons of garbage.

Welcome to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Trash floating in the Pacific gyre.  Photo by Cesar Harada

The world’s oceans each have more or less permanent currents that circulate through them: for example, the Gulf stream, the Humboldt current, the East-Australian current, the Equatorial counter-current.  These currents tend to form great circles on the map – clockwise in the northern hemisphere, counter-clockwise in the south – and in the centre of these regions (their ‘gyres’) the floating refuse (mostly long-lived plastics) is gradually accreting.

The oceans’ major currents and their gyres, from Wikipedia.

Some of the trash is still recognisable objects – bags, bottles, nets, even toilet seats (!) – but over time they start to break up so that the bulk of the trash is a giant cloud of small plastic particles.  This cloud is worse news than the larger pieces, as it essentially can’t be removed, the particles still pose serious hazards to marine life, and it may shade the water from the sun which slows the growth of plankton in these areas.

A sample of the region’s plastic “soup”, photo from Algalita Marine Research Foundation, via CNet

The image of a gigantic floating island of refuse seems very compelling to me.  Imagine those millions of tons of trash compressed together, mixed with dirt, seaweed, and dead fish and birds.  Could this be an alternative home for Dagon?  Perhaps the rotting hulks of abandoned ships are there too, ships that perhaps ran ‘aground’ (if that’s the right word).  I suppose this is now merging into something of the old popular image of the Sargasso Sea: located in a similar situation on the Atlantic ocean and named for the seaweed that grew there, it has often been imagined as something of a floating graveyard and a place of mystery.

Could someone have claimed this new territory as their domain, ruling from a decaying ship somewhere in the middle of this blighted floating land?  Is the land solid everywhere underfoot?  Are there sinkholes into the ocean beneath scattered around to trap the unwary, are there waterways through the mire?  What could be living beneath this land, what would survive in the toxic waters?  Perhaps it’s not stationary, perhaps it’s heading to the shore, perhaps even with the intent of invading?

The goliath tigerfish

Angler Jeremy Wade, photo from the Daily Mail.

[I suspect that this photo is actually a little deceptive, that it’s using a fish-eye (no pun intended) lens that exaggerates the size of the mouth.  But, then, we are talking about games where we suppose magic and dragons to be real …]

The goliath tigerfish is found in remote sections of the Congo.  Tigerfish are known for their aggressive feeding, behaving much like we think of piranha.  The goliath variety marry that ferocious nature with prodigious size.  Jeremy Wade, host of River Monsters, spent eight days to catch this example, reportedly 1.5m long and weighing almost 50kg.

Photo from the Daily Mail.

Fish are a little underutilised in games, probably because we breath air rather than water.  Big fish in the river? get out of the river; big bear in the forest? better get ready to fight.  Many of the species depicted on River Monsters should encourage us to right that balance.

The sewer divers of Mexico City

Via Edible Geography, stills from a National Geographic video.  Carlos Barrios is lowered into the murky depths

Mexico City has the extraordinary history of being built, essentially, on top of a lake.  The water feeding into it was drained away by the Conquistadors (the better to invade Tenochtitlan) and the modern city gradually grew in its place.  But the city is gradually sinking and as a result some of the city’s 650 kilometres of sewers no longer drain as effectively as they should.  They are terribly prone to clogging and with seasonal thunderstorms that means flooding.

Keeping these floods under control means keeping the sewer pumps free of blockages, and to do that they have a team of divers.  Their job is to go into the sewers while the pumps are still running, find the material that’s causing the problem, and remove it.  Generally that’s just rubbish that’s been swept up off the streets, but as a Washington Post article mentioned it could also be something much worse:

At least there were no human bodies today, like the two he found floating by recently.

…

He never found out who they were, because they were carried off in the flowing waters. The police were not called. The divers, who periodically encounter bodies because sewers are popular spots for dumping murder victims, only call police when they bring a body to the surface.

The cage lowers into the filth.

I imagine that it takes a special kind of person to do this work; apart from the filthy conditions, apart from the occasional encounter with dead bodies, the water is so dark and polluted that they can’t even see.  They inch their way through the sewers feeling ahead of them until they reach the blockage that will typically be up against the blades of a pump that’s still running and start reaching around to try to dislodge it.

We’d love to be able to see down there, but the water is so dirty and it’s got so many particles in it that the light reflects off everything and bounces on your eyes and you still can’t see. Eight hundred watts—one thousand watts even—and I can’t even see my own hand in front of my face. Apart from something that could help me see down there, I can’t think of anything. Fancy things like a robot or a submarine wouldn’t really help with the kinds of things I do. And we’d still be in the same situation: we can’t see anything down there, so we have to feel it

(From Edible Geography)

It is a fabulous scenario for a horror game – who knows what could be hiding down there? – but it’s got me thinking about a fantasy version.  Underground locations are commonplace; underwater locations are much less common but there are some; I can’t think of much at all by the way of games that have combined the two.