The Pit

The Pit is a cenote dive within the Dos Ojos cave system near Tulum in Quintana Roo, on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. It is a vertical shaft with a maximum depth of around 30 metres, an overhead cave environment throughout, and a halocline along with a hydrogen sulfide cloud layer partway down, where suspended organic debris gives the light shafts their distinctive golden, hazy look. Visibility is generally great, and divers have also noted low light sections deeper in the shaft along with a narcosis risk at depth. The site is rated advanced, owing to the combination of depth, the overhead structure, and the halocline and sulfide layer, and it draws divers mainly for photography and the play of light through the shaft rather than for marine life, since cenotes hold little in the way of fish.

Confirmed by our research team, reported by independent divers, or observed nearby via iNaturalist — each entry is labelled with its source.

• Green Sea TurtleChelonia mydasReported here · unconfirmed
• Slippery DickHalichoeres bivittatusReported here · unconfirmed
• Caribbean Land Hermit CrabCoenobita clypeatusReported here · unconfirmed
• Atlantic Sergeant MajorAbudefduf saxatilisReported here · unconfirmed
• Giant AnemoneCondylactis giganteaReported here · unconfirmed
• French GruntHaemulon flavolineatumReported here · unconfirmed