The half-mile dives off Bermuda

William Beebe and Otis Barton · 1930 CE – 1934 CE · Earth

The half-mile dives off Bermuda — William Beebe and Otis Barton · 1930 CE – 1934 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Lower a steel sphere half a mile into the open Atlantic and describe what lives there.

Historical context

Until 1930 everything known about deep-sea animals came from nets, which arrived at the surface full of broken and faded remains. Beebe's answer was to go and look, inside Otis Barton's ball of steel hung on a single cable, with no way of getting out and no way of coming up except the winch. Between 1930 and 1934 the two men made the dives off Nonsuch; the half-mile dive of 15 August 1934 was the deepest, and the deepest anyone would go for fifteen years.

The voyage, step by step

  1. The station on Nonsuch

    1934 CE

    Beebe's laboratory occupies a fourteen-acre island at the mouth of Castle Harbour, from which his staff have towed some fifteen hundred deep-sea nets through one circle of ocean since 1929.

  2. The Ready on station

    1934 CE

    Some ten kilometres south of Nonsuch, the old barge Ready carries the seven-ton winch from Beebe's expedition ship Arcturus, 3,500 feet of steel cable and a ball of steel weighing two and a half tonnes.

  3. Through the twilight

    1934 CE

    The colours go out one by one as the sphere sinks: at six metres the spectroscope shows the red almost gone, orange lasts to about forty-six metres, and by 183 metres only grey is left.

  4. Living lights

    1934 CE

    Below about 610 metres the only light is made by the animals themselves: rows of pale portholes on passing fish, sudden sparks, a shrimp that pours out a cloud of fire.

  5. Half a mile down

    15 August 1934

    On 15 August 1934 the sphere stops at 923 metres, 3,028 feet, with only about a dozen turns of cable left on the drum; the log shows it hanging there for just under three minutes.

  6. Back up the cable

    1934 CE

    The winch hauls them up for eighty minutes; a guy rope breaks with a terrific snap, the first daylight shows at 579 metres, and at 12.53 the door comes off.

  7. Half Mile Down

    1934 CE

    Beebe writes up the season on Nonsuch, and the book reaches the shops in time for Christmas 1934 and becomes an immediate best-seller.

Outcome

A depth of 923 metres on 15 August 1934, a record that stood for fifteen years, and, in later accounts, the first long look by a biologist at deep-sea animals alive in their own water.

William Beebe and Otis Barton

A naturalist and an engineer who had themselves lowered inside a steel ball off Bermuda between 1930 and 1934 and watched deep-sea animals alive in their own water.

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Sources

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