Secret Bay, off the coast of Mabini in the Philippines, has a secret that you have to dive way down to find. Bayani Cardenas, a hydrologist at the University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences, took a dive when he heard the water was bubbling. The bubbles at the top were nothing compared to what he encountered at the sea floor.
Some bubbles came a few at a time, in little hiccups, while others twirled like streamers. “At first, you see maybe a bubble spring every 50 feet or something, and then 150 feet down, you see a whole curtain from a distance,” Cardenas says. In some patches, he adds, the bubbles were “just gushing.” The researchers went down nearly 200 feet.
Cardenas and his team named the area Soda Springs. Read what causes all that effervescence, and see videos at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences)