Deep in the Ocean!

After having the privilege of reading the first article in National Geographic Magazine's June, 1931, issue, I have but a tiny understanding of the sheer joy felt by successful researchers, explorers, and even astronauts.  They have gone where no man has gone before, and lived to tell about their adventures!

In 1930, William Beebe had been "studying the life of the deep sea off Bermuda "for two years," ("A Trip to Davy Jones's Locker: Peering into Mysteries a Quarter Mile Down in the Open Sea, by Means of the Bathysphere," p. 656).  He was part of the Department of Tropical Research of the New York Zoological Society.

With a diving suit and copper helmet, he could only dive to a depth of sixty-three feet.  "It would have been exceedingly unwise to go much farther, for the steady force of the weight of the water at ten fathoms had already increased the pressure on eardrums and every portion of my head and body to almost forty-five pounds for each square inch" (p. 653).  So Mr. Beebe devised a ball-like steel diving object, large enough to accommodate two men with their legs curled up inside with small oxygen tanks, and be lowered from a boat on cables to a depth of fourteen hundred feet.  It weighed two tons.

He called his diving device a "bathysphere," "bathy" meaning "deep."  There were three round viewing ports with thick quartz glass as windows; they were just large enough to see out.  The second man in the sphere could not see out but was in constant communication with the ship above by means of a phone cable.  There was an electric light on the outside to illuminate the sea at depths where the sea was almost black without sunlight.

The author's chief delight during these dives was in the color of the sea at various depths and the absence of color in the animal life at lower depths.  He had previously cast nets at lower depths but the deep water fish were always dead.  The bathysphere gave him the opportunity to view the living fish.  They were strange and delicate.  "The eyes are elongated and telescopic, for use in the darkness" (photo caption, p. 669).  Many of the deep-water species glowed with fluorescent spots.

There was a beautiful eight-page section of color photographs of paintings of what Mr. Beebe had seen.  Cameras for this type of photography had yet to be invented.  My favorite was "Orange-lighted finger-squid catching lantern fish.  This unnamed squid from a full mile depth has a pair of enormous eyes with white luminous spots on the iris, and two orange bull's-eye lights at the tips of the longest arms.  Its life equipment is unsurpassed as regards eyesight, terrific speed, deadly suckers and muscular arms" (photo caption, p. 673).

Mr. Beebe's series of dives was very fruitful.  "When our time and money for deep-sea diving were exhausted, we had made 15 descents in the bathysphere, one to 1426 feet and three to 800 feet!" (p. 678).

He finishes his article thus: "To the ever-recurring question "How did it feel?" etc., I can only quote the words of Herbert Spencer, I felt like "an infinitesimal atom floating in illimitable space" (p. 678).

I'm jealous!