BENEATH THE OCEAN

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4011, 4 August 1931, Page 7

BENEATH THE OCEAN

STUDYING MARINE LIFE UNPRECEDENTED DEPTH REACHED. Mr William Beebe, a famous American scientist, who in recent years has devoted much time to the study marine life, contributes to the ‘National Geographic Magazine’ (Washington, United States) an article describing how ho was able to reach an ocean depth of 1,426 feet and observe marine life at various depths. The maximum depth at which divers can work in the Sicbe diving dress, which has been m general use for the past eighty yeais, is 150 ft, but for very brief periods depths

of over 200 ft have been reached in this dress. But Mr Beebe and a companion, Mr Otis Barton, went down to 1,426 ft without feeling any discomfort from the enormous pressure ol the water at that depth, because Eiey wore inside a steel sphere, 4Jft in diameter, weighing two tons. Oxygen tanks had been placed in it to supply ail 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 ot lime to- removing the excess cl carbon dioxide from the air. The door of the sphere was a steel plate, weighing 4001b, which was screwed and bolted to the bottom. Telephone communication was maintained between the occupants of the sphere (christened bathysphere, the prefix being derived from the Greek word for deep) and the barge from which it was launched by a winch into the water. 4he sphere was also fitted with electric light and a searchlight, the current being supplied by cable from the barge. The observation window in the sphere was six inches in diameter, and was made ol fused quartz, “the strongest and most transparent substance in the world, writes Mr Beebe.

The scene of operations was off Nonsuch Island, one of the Bermuda group, where Mr Beebe has established a laboratory for oceanographic work. Between June G 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.-100 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 the bathysphere. The constant swaying movement due to the rolling of the barge high overhead, the great glaring white sphere itself looming up through the blue murk, the apparent scarcity of organisms at best in the depths of the ocean as revealed by our net hauls, and finally the small size of the aperture, hardly as large as one's face —all these seemed handicaps too severe to be overcome. This secret scepticism made the

actual results all the more amazing. As fish after fish swam into my restricted lino of vision—fish which heretofore I had seen only dead and in my nets —as 1 saw their colours and their absence of colours, their activities and modes of swimming, and clear evidence of their sociability or solitary habits, 1 felt that all the trouble and cost and risk were repaid manifold. “A wholly unexpected discovery was the presence of deep-sea fish at higher levels than J had ever taken them in the trawls. I am convinced this is due to the fact that a greater intensity of light in the upper strata enables the fish to sec and avoid the slowly oncoming nets, whereas further down in the darkness they swim blindly across tlie path of the nets, or, actually into tiie entrances. The most spectacular observation was of creatures of large size, which, again and again, I saw hovering in the distance. Whether fish, squid, or other organisms I cannot say with certainty—fish, 1 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 wo are of the inhabitants of Mars.”