BENEATH THE OCEAN

Evening Star, Issue 20846, 16 July 1931, Page 1

BENEATH THE OCEAN

STUDYING MARINE LIFE • UNPRECEDENTED DEPTH REACHED. 1 air William Beebe, a famous American scientist, who in recent years lias devoted much time to the study olq marine life, contributes to the * National Geographic Magazine’ (Washington* United States) an article describing how he was able to reach an ocean! depth of 1,426 feet and observe marina life at various depths. The maximum depth at. which divers can work in the Siebe diving dress, which has been inj general use for the past eighty years, is 150 ft, but for very brief periods depths of over 200 ft have been reached ini this dress. But Air Beebe and a com. panion, Mr Otis Barton, went down te, 1,426 ft without feeling any discomfort from the enormous pressure of tha water at that depth, because they wera inside a steel sphere, 4-Jft in diameter, weighing two tons. Oxygen tanks had been placed in it to supply air to the occupants. One of the tanks was fitted with a delicate valve which permitted two litres of oxygen to escape every minute. There was also a wire rack} containing calcium chloride for absorbing moisture, and another containing soda of lime for removing the excess ofi carbon dioxide from tbe air. The door of the sphere was a steel plate, weighing 4001 b, which was screwed and bolted to the bottom. Telephone communication was maintained between the occupants of the sphere (christened bathysphere, the prefix being derived froja the Greek word for deep) and the barge from which it was launched by, a winch into the water. The sphere was also fitted with light and a searchlight, the current being supplied by cable from the barge. The observation window in the sphere was sis inches in diameter, and was made ofj fused quartz, “the strongest and most transparent substance in the world/5 writes Air Beebe.

The scene of operations was off Non* such Island, one of the Bermuda group, where Mr Beehe has established at laboratory for oceanographic work. Between June 6 and 20, 1930, Mr Beebe and Mr Barton made fifteen, descents in the bathysphere, three being to 800! feet, and only one to over 1,400 feet* “I never doubted the success of the adventure as a whole,” writes Mr! Beebe, “but I had had much less faith in the possibility of seeing many living creatures from the window of tbebathy* sphere. The constant swaying move* ment due to the rolling of the barge high overhead, tho_ great glaring white sphere itself looming up through the blue murk, the apparent scarcity of or* gauisms at best in the depths of the ocean as revealed by our net hauls, and! ..finally'the small size of the aperiure, hardly, as largo as. one’s face—all these; seemed handicaps ioo severe to be over* come. This secret scepticism made tho actual results all the more amazing. As fish after fish swam into my restricted! line of vision—fish which heretofore K had seen only dead and in my nets —as I saw their colours and their absence o£ colours, their activities and modes ofi swimming, and clear evidence of their sociability or solitary habits, I felt that, all the trouble and cost and risk wera repaid manifold. . “A wholly unexpected discovery was( the presence of deep-sea fish at higher, levels than I had ever taken them in! the trawls. I am convinced this ia due to,the fact that a greater intensity, of light in the upper strata enables the fish to see and avoid the slowly oncoming nets, whereas further down irt the darkness they swim blindly across the path of the nets, or actually into the entrances. The most spectacular observation was of creatures of largo size, which, again and again, I sawj hovering in the distance. Whether fish, squid, or other organisms I cannot say with certainty-fish, I am inclined to believe —but in any case creatures far larger than we have ever taken in any net, and of whose names, appearance,and habits we are as 'utterly ignorant as we are of the inhabitants of Mars. 1 .!