Cenote season: It's all connected
Crisscrossing Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, a vast system of limestone caves forms a unique underwater world linking the region’s forests and towns to offshore coral reefs and the Caribbean Sea beyond.
In the first of a new Parley miniseries, we chat with Klaus Thymann, whose film Flows traces the connections between cenotes and the sea.
Filmed in the caves and out on the sea around Tulum in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Klaus Thymann’s Flows take viewers deep into the literal Mayan underworld to explore the aquifer under the Yucatán Peninsula and a number of beautiful and interlinked aquatic environments. From the Sian Ka’an Marine Reserve to tropical mangrove forests and the open ocean, the film explores the challenges of an ever-growing tourism industry, encroaching construction, unsustainable development and related corruption. We caught up with Klaus to learn more.
Q & A
Do you remember the first time you scuba dived into a cenote? What that was like?
Yes – it was maybe five, six years ago. I remember the intense blue color and also the excitement of going down to somewhere where it's so dark you can't really see where you're going. Then as you get down, your eyes adjust and you can start seeing stuff. I mean, it is just really another world. It sounds like a cliché, but diving into one is not like anything else. The caves and structures and different layers of water create this incredible underwater world. I remember it very vividly. It's also, once you're down and your eyes have adjusted, it's quite monochromatic in these blue hues, but you can also look up and you can see that hole for the surface and you really feel that's your little portal.
How are cenotes and the ocean linked?
A lot of them are interconnected, because the rock is very porous. So if you can almost picture a sponge or arteries or something else, like some sort of connectivity. The water flows from inland out towards the sea, and you can access that river system. It's the largest underground river system on the planet.
Is it fresh or salt water?
Sometimes both, and all the freshwater sits on top of saltwater. When you look at the Yucatán Peninsula’s coastline from the top, you know there's a clear line on the map, but underneath that coastline is still the porous rock. So in the same way that the freshwater filters through to rock, this saltwater comes in underneath and it goes in and it goes something as far as 70 miles inland from the coast.
What are the major of threats facing that region, because of the geology, because of how that works?
That freshwater is the drinking water, not the only drinking water, but it's the water use for households, etc. Anything that is left on top or in the cenotes, down in the water, will eventually flow through the system and out to the sea. The intensity of tourism, the intensity of the population increase, has meant that the way things have been done in the past are no longer working.
At a smaller scale, human waste and other materials could go into the water and out, dissolve in the rivers and ocean and it wouldn't be a problem. But when you have millions of tourists every year, if that water's untreated, then you can imagine the amount of the toilets being flushed. That's a lot of sh*t and p*ss going into this water system. It starts there, it goes through to the underwater rivers and ends up in the ocean.
The problem with that kind of pollution is that the increased nutrients form an algae, that will then grow on the corals and that will kill the corals. And without the corals, the coast is more vulnerable to storms, there's less fish. I mean, we need the corals. The corals have many threats already, so I think anything to help the corals is needed.
So it's mainly a sewage issue, less about pesticides or other garbage and stuff like that?
I mean, locally, it's primarily about nutrients, but in different ways, shapes and forms. There's stuff that's is being treated. There's different categories, even if it is treated, that it still has nutrients in, there's also overflow if there's too much treatment water.
What can people do when they're visiting the region to help?
Oh, that's simple. Make sure you know where your poop goes – and then vote with your money. But be very, very critical of anything calling itself eco-chic or anything else, because chances are, if they don't have a local treatment system and it's just being collected in septic tanks, I mean, that, you need to ask where it goes, for sure. That's one thing that could be done, which is very important.
The other environmental factor is that there's not a huge electrical grid, so some of the places aren't connected to the grid. So the way they create their energy is these big diesel generators that pollute locally and pollute globally.
If you want to visit (and it's a fantastic place) then I think the biggest factor is where you stay and what you demand of the place where you stay. And then I think secondly, is what's consumed. There isn't an infinite amount of fish in the ocean, for sure. But I mean, the whole diet thing, we should care about every day, not just on vacation
All images: Klaus Thymann
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