- Thanks to this new discovery they have documented 260 metres of new gallery
- GEM has been joined by a research group from the University of Valencia in search of underground aquatic fauna.
The Moraig Exploration Group (GEM) continues achieving important milestones on the Riu del Moraig. In their latest expedition, carried out this week, they have managed to advance to a depth of 3,060 metres from the mouth of the sea, thus surpassing the expedition’s peak of 2,800 metres that they reached in 2023.
Thanks to this new discovery, they have documented 260 metres of new gallery, which, added to other galleries and aquifer networks, would make a total of 6,000 new metres explored by this group of divers since their first interventions in 2013, as well as a total of 15 exploration peaks in twelve years.
“We are very happy and excited because, apart from having surpassed 3,000 metres, we have managed to reach a point that, on the ground, is very important for us. We have managed to get over the mountain of Puig Llorença, where there is less land on top, which means that we will be able to geolocate the point in the future with measurement systems that geolocate the position underwater”, explained the speleodiver in charge of the expedition, Eliseo Belzunce.
The Riu del Moraig or Riu Blanc is an underwater river of fresh and salty water that is unique in the world. Hence its uniqueness and the need for optimal and very specific conditions to be able to continue exploring it. In fact, the GEM had previously tried twice this year, in February and March, to enter its depths without success.
“We need some currents and good visibility, and that is not always easy, because normally when there is visibility there is no current and, on the contrary, sometimes there is too much current and then the visibility is not good. It has been very difficult for us to reach this new point, because 2024 was a very dry and impracticable year due to the lack of water in the aquifer. Now the situation was good, we took advantage of it and everything went very well”, explained Belzunce.
But this exploration has not only been useful to look for new galleries and to topograph the cavity. The Moraig Exploration Group has been joined by a research group from the Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Valencia. Headed by Ferrán Palero and in collaboration with the speleodiver Frank Brehier, the goal was to advance in their studies on the subterranean aquatic fauna of the Valencian Community.
The uniqueness of the Riu del Moraig and the important work of the GEM
The Riu del Moraig or Riu Blanc is an underwater river of fresh and salty water, unique in the world, made up of numerous sinkholes and galleries. Few people have ever ventured into this unknown cavity. Even today, almost 50 years after the first explorations, the Riu del Moraig is still a mystery that the Moraig Exploration Group (GEM), made up of divers Eliseo Belzunce, Carles Ramoneda, Joel Borrazas, Guaica Armisén, Jonathan Alcántara, Vicente Gil, Belén Andrés, José María Cortés, Josi Olave, Sasha Karnilovich, Óscar Dolcet, Emanuel Ávila, Albert Pete and other expert geologists, oceanographers, marine biologists, etc., who collaborate in their studies tries to give light.
Since 2013, this group of cave divers from all over Spain has taken on the challenge of diving into its depths and has managed to get to where no one had gone before. Others tried before to complete the studies carried out by José María Cortés or the German Bernhard Pack, who died in 1992 during a dive in the Moraig. They reached a distance of 1,125 metres in this complex grotto and, later, a group of English researchers reached 1,350 metres. The GEM is the group that has managed to explore the most metres, almost tripling the numbers of the first dives and reaching a distance of 3,000 metres from the sea mouth and a depth of 100 metres. In 2023, the GEM and the Council of El Poble Nou de Benitatxell signed for the first time an annual collaboration agreement.
