A local resident stumbles as he wades through flood water on a residential street in Carlisle, Britain December 6, 2015. British police have declared a major incident in northern England after prolonged heavy rain caused widespread flooding and forced emergency services to evacuate residents from their homes. (Photo by Phil Noble/Reuters)

A man driving a vintage car reacts as he passes by crabs crossing a highway on their way to spawn in the sea in Playa Giron, Cuba on April 25, 2017. Each year, after the first spring rains, millions of red, yellow and black landcrabs march for days from the surrounding forests to the bay on Cuba's southern coast to spawn in the sea. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

A massive positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike hits in Coolidge, Arizona, 31 August 2016. Thousands of rain drops merge to form mammoth travelling sheets of water in these breathtaking monsoons. Veteran storm chaser and photographer Mike Olbinski captured the stunning beauty of monsoons in timelapses and stills while chasing storm systems across America. (Photo by Mike Olbinski/Barcroft Images)

Tim Laman is a field biologist and wildlife photojournalist. His pioneering research in the rain forest canopy in Borneo led to a PhD from Harvard and his first National Geographic article in 1997. Since then, he has pursued his passion for exploring wild places and documenting little-known and endangered wildlife by becoming a regular contributor to National Geographic. He has eighteen articles to his credit to date, all of which have had a conservation message. Some have focused on endangered species such as Orangutans or Hornbills, while others, such as a series of articles on Conservation International’s Biodiversity Hotspots, have highlighted regions under intense pressure.

A cenote is a natural phenomenon, a sinkhole in the Earth’s surface. The Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico has an estimated 7,000 cenotes because it is primarily made up of porous limestone. For millions of years, rainfall slowly ate away at the limestone and a huge system of underground caves and caverns was formed. Many filled with water from rain or from the underground water table. When the roof of a water filled cave collapses, a cenote is born. The water found in a cenote may be fresh water, salt water, or both. Structurally it may be completely open, like a lake, almost completely closed with just a small opening at the top, or somewhere in between.

The sign above the door of restaurant and hotel “Am Paulusbogen” is partially submerged in the flooded centre of the Bavarian town of Passau, about 200 km (124 miles) north-east of Munich June 3, 2013. (Photo by Michaela Rehle/Reuters)

Tom Wilder, 17 from Kent, dives in the mud at the Glastonbury Festival site at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 23, 2011 in Glastonbury, England. Music fans had to brave more rain today at the five-day festival which opened yesterday. This year the festival will feature headline acts U2, Coldplay and Beyonce. The festival, which started in 1970 when several hundred hippies paid 1 GBP to watch Marc Bolan, has grown into Europe's largest music festival attracting more than 175,000 people over five days. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

“NTV (Cyrillic: НТВ) is a Russian television channel. As a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company Media-Most, it was a pioneer in the post-Soviet independent television media, but was later taken over by state-owned Gazprom”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A woman with “I love NTV” painted on here face cheers in support of the independent Russian NTV television station April 7, 2001 during a rally in Moscow. Thousands of people gathered in the rain to show their support for Russia's only national independent television station in its fight against new owners. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Newsmakers)