January 19, 2019 • 41 mins
In 1930, American naturalist William Beebe began his descent in a spherical, unpowered submarine known as a Bathysphere -- and in doing so visited a world previously unseen by human beings. In this two-part Stuff to Blow Your Mind exploration, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick discuss humanity’s prior understanding of the deep ocean and Beebe’s astounding reports from the world a half mile down. (Originally published March 29, 2018)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's
time to go into the vault for part two of
our exploration of William Beebe and the Bathosphere. That's right.
This episode originally aired March eighteen, technically not even a
year ago, but we're re airing the Bathosphere episodes because
they concerned the deep ocean and the mysteries of the deep.
(00:28):
And we've got a new fiction podcast venture launching January
thirty one, titled Transgenesis UM that I wrote and created
and worked with a whole host of people here at
How Stuff Works and people from outside the organization, including Joe.
Joe's on the podcast as well. Oh I am, oh, yeah,
I guess I am. Yeah. So everyone should should tune
in for that. If you want to check that venture out,
(00:50):
head on over to Transgenesis dot show. That's the website. Uh.
And also, I think by the time you're listening to this,
you should be able to look up Transgenesis and begin
subscribing to it. If not, that'll be coming soon. We're
all so excited about that. Robert, you shouldn't sound so
bashful you should be shouting from the rooftops. Well, it's
still early days. I'm working up to shouting. So hopefully
(01:11):
the next of all episodes, I'll do more shouting. Okay,
Transgenesis is coming also check that out. But today please
enjoy part two of our exploration of the atmosphere. Welcome
to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
(01:35):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part two of our two part exploration
of the depths of the see the History of Knowledge
and Exploration of the deep Sea. And this this time
we're really going to be focusing in on William b. B.
That's right. We we alluded to him at the beginning
of the last episode. So he was an American naturalist, explorer, author,
(01:59):
uh he of from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen sixty two,
and h he was. He was a very interesting fellow,
just to put it mildly. Before there was Neil de Grass,
Dyson or Carl Sagan or even Jacques Gusteau, there was
William Beebe, who some writers have called the first celebrity scientist.
(02:20):
So he traveled around and lectured, he wrote books, he recruited,
we received quite a bit of media coverage, and he
was actually in writing books. He was a good writer,
this thing that helps. Yeah, he was a good popularizer
of science. He was a great science communicator before this
was really that much of a thing. Yeah, I often
think of Darwin as a great science communicator, but yeah,
(02:42):
Beebe really took it to the next level, especially as
we'll talk about in a minute, by employing all kinds
of people to help spread the message of scientific discoveries
in ways that are easily digestible to the public. Yeah.
So he he was an ornithologist at the New York
Zoological Society and uh he he actually left college before
(03:03):
completing his degree in order to to to work, uh
for for the society. But he just he's one of
these guys who just seemed to really just ascend once
he you know, once he hit the ground working he
was he would have ended up being becoming the founder
of the Society's Department of Tropical Research. And he conducted
he conducted research, it's worth noting across two world wars
(03:26):
and the Great Depression, like that was the time period,
the Trying time period, a time when most of the
energy in the world seemed to be aimed at either
conducting warfare, surviving warfare, surviving economic depression. UH. But he
was able to successfully carry out a great deal of
research and UH and then communicate the Department of the
(03:49):
Tropical Researches work as well. And to do this he
enlisted not only scientists but also historians, writers, and artists.
And by this I mean he took artists with him
on his expedition, generating some really captivating artwork and b
B himself sketched the creatures that he saw in the depths.
I mean. It's really kind of surprising, however, though, that that,
given that he was such a celebrity at the time, uh,
(04:13):
that that we don't see him celebrated as much in
pop culture today. Like he's certainly again, he's remembered, it's
not like he's forgotten and lost to history. But you
would just think that he would have more of a
like a tesla status today. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I
will say that again. Before we went to this recent
(04:34):
exhibit at the American Museum and Natural History in New
York about the Unseen Depths of the Ocean had some
stuff about BB before that. I think maybe I was
a little bit aware of him, but didn't really know anything.
And that's crazy, because his life and his work was
so interesting. Yeah, I mean for starters, he influenced a
number of notable people. Um For instance, E. O. Wilson,
(04:57):
who we've discussed on the show before, has has pointed
to William Beebe as someone who inspired his scientific career. Yeah.
There are a lot of interesting things about Bebe's legacy.
One cool one that does get mentioned sometimes is the
fact that he was criticized during his life for hiring
and mentoring female researchers, which a lot of irritable sexist
(05:19):
establishment scientists of the time thought was an indication that
his work was not serious or was unprofessional. Uh, of
course they were wrong, right. BB helped give a leg
up to a great scientists like Joscelyn Crane, who studied,
among other things, invertebrate ethology, so the behavior of invertebrates,
with a special focus on fiddler crabs, and also the
explorer and research scientists Gloria Hollister, who pioneered lab techniques
(05:43):
for preparing marine specimens, and she herself actually performed a
dives in the capsule that we're gonna be talking about
more in this episode of the Bathosphere, the steel ball
that finally took us down into the depths. Some of
the females he employed were also artists as well. There's
actually a wonderful New York Times article that came out, uh,
(06:04):
just last year about an exhibition of various works from
this period that I recommend everyone check out it. If
you just look for William Bbe Department of Trapical Research illustrations,
you'll find it. And there's some just some fabulous illustrations
of say, the Bathosphere descending into the depths with strange
creatures swirling around it. Yeah, if you get a chance,
(06:24):
you should look up illustrations. Especially I would say of
the artist Elsa Bostelmann, who she was one of the
artists who accompanied his research, and she sketched and painted
what bb and and his companion Notice Barton saw in
the deep from the Bathosphere, which we're gonna be talking
about more later. But her work is just beautiful and
weird and superb. It's uh, it's excellent science art. Yeah,
(06:47):
for reasons that will become obvious as we proceed of
photography or certainly film was just not an option aboard
the Bathosphere, so they had to depend on sketches. Uh.
And and also just you have considered the time during
which all this have taken place. For instance, so one
of his dives was actually broadcast on NBC Radio, which
(07:07):
is a testament to the popularity of his work, but
also just shows you the limitations of the visual technology
at the time. Now. Of course, another great weird note
in pop culture is that BB's collaborator Otis Barton, who
was his his co pilot in the Bathisphere and one
of the people, I think the designer, the main designer
(07:28):
of the Bathosphere made a movie, made a movie based
on what they did. Yeah, Titans of the Deep. And
if you look at the poster art for this film,
and I'll try to include it on the landing page
for this episode, is stuff to blow your mind. It
creates certain expectations of the content. Yeah, I will say,
it's so it's supposed to be like a documentary film,
(07:49):
right they's they made it as a documentary apparently, And
even though it's like BB is mentioned uh on the
on the poster, it's really apparently BB wasn't himself super
involved in the production. Yeah, I've seen it actually described
as more of like an action movie or an exploitation
horror movie. I couldn't. I couldn't find this movie, so
(08:10):
I don't. I didn't get to watch it. Yeah I
would have. I was not able to find, uh, even
any footage from it or a trailer or what would
pass for a trailer. But you can definitely get a
sense of the vibe they were going for if you
just look at the poster, which of course has like
a vague whale shaped sea monster with this big saw
tooth face and then a dude with a harpoon poise
(08:31):
to hit it. It looks in composition like the much
later poster for the movie Journey to the Seventh Planet,
which is this nineteen sixty two sci fi barbecue about
a bunch of astronauts who fly out to explore Uranus
and then get this they essentially end up with a
d intellectualized version of the plot from Solaris and the
(08:53):
movie stars, of course, John agar Ah, yes a frequent
a frequent name for anyone's ever plunged the depths of
of B movies from that era. But if you look
at this poster for Journey to the Seventh Planet. It's
I don't know if it was actually inspired by Titans
of the Deep, but they look very similar to me.
I also found an image this was an advertisement. But
(09:15):
it turns out even Otis Barton, who accompanied William bb
in the Bathosphere. He was famous enough at the time
to appear in a camel advertisement for Camel cigarettes where
you see him featured there and he's saying, I smoke
as many camels as I like. They don't give me
jittery nerves. No, camels have a have a swell taste,
mild and yet with rich, mellow flavor. I smoked them
(09:37):
all in the Bathosphere. I don't I do not think
the bathosphere is a good smoking environment. Two packs per dive. Well,
we've been teasing it enough. I think maybe we should
take a quick break and then when we come back,
we should discuss the bathosphere itself. All right, thank thank alright,
we're back al right, So I will refer you to
(09:59):
an image like a photograph of the Bathosphere on the
landing page for this episode is stuff to blow your
mind dot com. But we're also going to describe it
for you here so no need to pull the car
over what have you. Depending on how you're listening to us. Okay, so,
as you're trying to imagine the Bathosphere, it's probably best
to dismiss some of your more modern and TV friendly
notions of exploratory submarines, because the bathosphere was less of
(10:25):
a submarine and more of just a death trap. Right.
It's like, would you like to get inside a bowling
ball and go to the bottom of the ocean? Yeah,
a steel ball that men climb inside and then it
is lowered into the ocean depths. Let's let's ask some questions.
Does this have a propeller? No? Does it have fins? No?
Does it have robotic arms? No? What does it have
(10:47):
really anything on the outside other than just a steel sphere?
I mean, basically, it is a steel bowling ball that
men climb inside through what what Baby referred to just
as the door? And then it has even door is
a little misleading, Yeah, I mean it's not really a door.
They got in through a hole that was then bolted shut. Right. See,
(11:09):
it's sealed shut like a like an iron casket. And
then it has these three uh, the three portals that
they look out off that look kind of like stubby eyestalks. So, Robert,
how big was the athmosphere that these two people got into? Well,
here's a here's a quick quote from Baby from his
biography half Mile Down, which which we're gonna refer to
(11:30):
a lot. If if if we read a quote quote
from Baby in this and we don't fully attribute it,
it's from half Mile Down. Baby says it was not
as tall as a man, measuring only four ft nine
inches in diameter, but its walls were everywhere an inch
and a quarter thick, and it weighed five thousand, four
hundred pounds. A first casting had weighed twice as much,
(11:51):
but it would have been too heavy for any of
the winches available in Bermuda. And was jumped. Now about
this steel ball. If you don't have an intuitive since
of numbers to physical scale, I want to pause for
a second and dwell on how tiny this is. You
can buy beach balls bigger than this undersea exploration vessel.
That's crazy. You included a picture here on our notes
(12:12):
showing what a sixty beach ball looks like next to
presumably an average sized individual. I guess there is probably
a tall guy, but but still imagine two of him
inside of it. That's unbelievable. And that's bigger than the
bathosphere was. This was this thing was tiny. People like
they were crammed inside. But there was a reason it
(12:34):
had to be that small, right, Yeah, because, as William J.
Broad points out in his book The Universe Below, the
smaller the sphere, the greater strength of its walls. If
you had more space in there, you need thicker walls,
which would of course mean increasing the weight of the thing.
So yeah, we run into the problem with with with
the winches that we've already discussed. It's almost like a
(12:55):
parallel of the problems of shielding from radiation in space,
right Like, you want to send up a spacecraft that
will protect the astronauts with really thick shielding in the walls,
but you've got a problem with getting so much mass
up into space that you know, you could have all
these really really thick walls. It's like a parallel to that.
You know, you you could have really really thick walls
(13:17):
to make sure you're super protected from the pressure and
you've got enough room to move around, but it just
gets harder and harder to get you down into the
depths and back up safely if you do that. Yeah.
So this was designed by BB an American engineer Otis Barton,
who already mentioned, and it featured three viewing portals and
these were This was not glass. You couldn't just look
out just normal glass because it needed to withstand the pressure.
(13:40):
This was fused quartz eight inches in diameter and three
inches thick, and the fittings again, they look like stubby
eye stalks. It's like a three eyed monster. Yeah. And
quartz was used because it was the quote strongest transparent
substance known and it transmits all wavelengths of light. Now,
earlier we mentioned the door that wasn't really a door.
(14:01):
What does BB say about the door. He describes it
as a quote round four hundred pound lid that quote
had to be lifted on and off by a block
and tackle and fitted snugly over ten large bolts around
the manhole. The ladder just big enough to permit the
passage of a slender human body. Babe was a very
slender guy, we should point out. I've seen pictures of
(14:21):
him and he is spind lee. Now on top of that,
let's discuss some of the other attributes of physical attributes
of the bathosphere. It had a single external light, just
one thousand watts and one light and you've flipped it
on or off from inside. And the sphere was lowered
on a single steel, non twisting cable nearly an inch
(14:42):
in diameter with a breaking strain of twenty nine tons
or a dozen bathispheres. Okay, So they wanted to be
real safe because, of course, if that cable breaks, you're
in a world a hurt. Yeah, you're you're done for,
and you have to worry about more than just the
what happens if the cable breaks, So you have to
worry about, well, what if they're stormy weather, et cetera.
Now you mentioned there's a light on the thing, so
(15:03):
that means they got to get power down there somehow. Yeah,
So they had an additional cable that carried both the
electrical power and the telephone wires. Oh, telephone wires. So
they had to have some way to communicate with the service.
I assume they couldn't just tug on the cable. Yeah,
I don't think that would work. But but yeah, this
is this is kind of the limits of their connections
to the surface. They had electricity coming down and they
(15:25):
had that telephone wire. They did not have an air
tube coming down. No, but of course they had to breathe.
So the batmosphere included oxygen tanks with automatic valves. Uh.
That provided the atmosphere, and then they just had trays
of chemical setting out. I believe it was soda, lime,
and calcium chloride. Yeah. And this was to absorb moisture
(15:46):
and carbon dioxide. Yeah, because you don't just need fresh
air to breathe in, you need to scrub the carbon
dioxide that you're breathing out. Yeah. I would, I would
just want to drive home. How I mean, it's an
amazing invention, but how dangerously crude it can it can feel.
It reminds me of there was the film was it
The Voyagers the Explorers? Yes, where the kids build this
(16:11):
kind of spaceship that sets inside a like a magic
force field sphere. But they just build it, right, They
just constructed from what they have at hand, And there's
a there's a similar vibe with the bathosphere like that.
There's just it's just so ballsy to imagine climbing in
this thing and the depth. I mean, it is a
large ball, It is a it is a steel ball. Yes.
(16:35):
And even though it holds two divers and is essentially
a two man crew, uh BB says that the total
crew required to support this thing, uh, most of which
are going to be members on the surface. Uh, it
comes to around twenty eight people total, so two under
the water above the water. All right. So let's say
(16:57):
you're William Bbe and you're like, okay, I've got a
steel ball to die in. Um, where where are we
going to put this down in the water? Well, they
set their side some the deep seas off the coast
of Bermuda, UH, specifically a circular area about eight miles
in diameter near non Such Island, and here the depth
reached about a mile. The first dive occurred in nineteen thirty.
(17:17):
By June eleven, nineteen thirty, they'd reached a depth of
dred feet or four hundred meters, and in nineteen thirty
four they reached three thousand feet or nine hundred meters,
And that was, of course by far the world record.
That they went much lower than anybody had ever been
able to explore before. Yeah, they were really breaking new
grounds with this. Now, the bathosphere greatly improved humanity's ability
(17:41):
to explore the depths. Uh. But again it was it
was ultimately a risky vessel to use, and it was
soon replaced by safer designs, including the bath Escape, which
positioned a traditional bathosphere beneath a large float, and even
the likes of the modern deep sea channel You're famously
piloted by James Cameron that boasts a pilot sphere position
(18:04):
beneath the rest of the vessel. So you can think
of post bathosphere designs as just basically being the bathosphere
attached to a larger system of flotation, a submarine based submarine.
Basically like, let's attach this to a submarine that has power,
that has the ability to to to raise and lower
(18:25):
itself within the water. But the bathosphere was was just
the sphere, just the this uh, this steel container for
the humans to descend in. Having your own power really
does seem to make a difference, right, I Mean, there's
a huge difference between being in a submarine that can
move and just hanging in a ball on a thread. Yeah,
I mean just the psychological uh notion here, just the
(18:48):
idea that they have some if I if I get
tired of descending into the darkness of the deep sea,
then I can just I can. I can raise myself
out of this. I have some level of control, and
I'm not just hoping that everything is going okay up
there on the surface now. Of course, by virtue of
the fact that BB and his team went deeper than
anyone ever had before, he got to observe far more
(19:10):
than anyone ever had before. So I think we should
go into his scientific observations, and we'll do that right
after this break. Thank thank Alright, we're back. So William B.
B the modern Gilgamesh. He and his co pilot are
in the ball in the steel death trap, sinking down, down,
down into the ocean, deeper than anybody's ever gone before,
(19:31):
and looking out the portholes to see what they can see.
So let's talk about what they see. What did they
discover through this research method? Well? BB observed and sketched
again because cameras of the day were largely useless given
the conditions of the bathosphere in its environment. But he
described a world quote stranger than any imagination could have conceived,
(19:51):
and he writes about it very beautifully. Oh yeah, and
and he really brought the results. Between seven b B
and his team caught more than a hundred and fifteen
thousand animals from two hundred and twenty species, many many
of which were new to science, so they were combining
different research methods at the same time. Now, before we
(20:11):
get into some of the specific creatures that he saw
claim to have seen, uh, we should probably just talk
about his experience with darkness and light, because ultimately that
is the I mean that, that's kind of the defining
experience that he describes. Oh, exactly, so bb Right's quote,
in the course of the half mile down, although my
eyes were perfectly dark adapted, I could detect not the
(20:35):
faintest glimmer of light from seventeen hundred feet down, So,
as far as the human eye was concerned, conditions of
absolute darkness existed at these deeper levels. And then he says,
from seventeen hundred feet down, animal light is the only
external source of illumination. So of course they did have
a light they could flip on, but they didn't want
to do that all the time, right, because that would
(20:56):
be affecting and changing the environment, So they didn't do
that at always. They would try to see often just
what they could see in the dark that was self illuminated.
And when you go that far down. There actually are
very many bioluminescent creatures that will illuminate themselves for you
to see. But they'll also illuminate the water so that
you can see other animals around them. And BB writes quote,
(21:18):
Occasionally the head of a fish would appear conspicuously against
the surrounding black, illumined by some indirect source of unknown lighting.
Eyes especially stood out, with no definite source of light visible.
When teeth were thus silhouetted, I knew it was from
a luminous mucus which covered them. Cheek lights flashed and
dimmed or vanished altogether, showing some control other than the
(21:41):
usual disappearance into an opaque epidermal trench. And I should
mention those last quotes I provided came from a paper
he published in Proceedings to the National Academy of Sciences
in nineteen thirty two or thirty three. Yeah, he was
extremely impressed by the display of bioluminescence as as he descended,
so he noted the lights of fish, jellies, and various
(22:04):
animals that he couldn't really identify in passing. And it
was something of a revelation to him. About a third
of a mile down he saw something that he described
as a quote pyrotechnic network and was and it was
quote so delicate and evanescent that its abyssal form is
quite lost if we ever take it in our nets.
(22:24):
So in other words, if we were just to pull
this up, you know what, what would we have. We
would have maybe some shriveled mass, but we certainly would
not have this floating bioluminescent thing that I'm witnessing right now. Well,
in the last episode, we talked about the c cucumber
that turns to red kool aid. Here you would guests
turn into buyo luminescent kool aid. And then there's this,
(22:46):
there's this, this description of the abyssal rainbow cars, which
will come back to later on. He says, at eleven
seventeen o'clock, I turned the light on suddenly and saw
a strange quartet of fish to which I have not
been able to fit genus or family, shape, size, color,
and one fin I saw clearly. But ourbistle rainbow guards
(23:07):
is as far as I dare go, you know, words
these saying that's as far as I dare go, and
classifying it and naming it quote and they may be anything,
but guards about four inches overall. They were slender and stiff,
with long, sharply pointed jaws. And it's worth noting no
one has ever captured a specimen quite like this, nor
seen it. Uh And this, this is one of the
(23:31):
mysteries that arises from William Beebe's observations, specimens that have
have not been caught or even witnessed again, and we're
left to wonder what what did he see? Right? Did
he have access somehow to to seeing things no one
has actually seen since then? Or was he mistaken? Did
he think he was seeing something that he actually wasn't
(23:53):
or was he making it up? I mean, I don't
want to think he was making it up, but I
guess we have to consider that as a possibility. Yeah,
and we'll we'll touch on that some of the thinking
on that a little later. But but one thing we
should go ahead and drive home here is that again,
the bathosphere did not have an engine on it. It
did not have propellers. It was a very silent affair
in a realm where where sound truly carries and can
(24:17):
have damaging effects. Especially our modern uh are, our modern
state of affairs with with with ships and sonar, but
even just a noisy submarine would have potentially scared away
various species. So there is an argument to be made
here that the bathosphere, as it's descending rather silently and
at times uh an incomplete darkness, would have attracted or
(24:42):
been or at least would not have have frightened away
species that would recoil from a modern exploratory submarine. That's interesting,
and that's that's a good point to keep in mind
as we go on and discuss some more of the
things he recorded seeing. I think if you have the
ability while you're listening, you should look up some of
the art works of Elsa Bostelman. She was again one
(25:02):
of the artists who was doing sketches for for BB's team,
and so it would be great to have some of
those in front of your eyes while we're talking here. Now,
another variety of fish that BB reported seeing are the
dragon fish. These are different than sea dragons, right quote
a six inch dragonfish or still Maya's past lights first
visible than three seconds of searchlight for identification, then lights alone.
(25:26):
And there seemed no reason why we should not swing
the door open and swing swim out. Now I can
think of various reasons not to do that, bab, But
I understand that he's trying to capture his excitement here.
It's the deep sea version of the thing, like you know,
the sudden desire to the call of the void, right yeah, yeah,
or the desire to like swerve into oncoming traffic. So
(25:48):
he was this was his guests that these were dragonfish.
And again we have to put ourselves in the bathmosphere
and imagine peering out through these tiny uh courtz lenses
at at things just swimming by, sometimes lingering but maybe not,
sometimes wholly visible for a few seconds, sometimes only partially visible.
(26:09):
But he guessed that these were some variety of dragonfish. Uh.
And the particular species that he was describing was unknown
to science at the time, but he was familiar with
other species of stomias. Now he apparently reported seeing a
six foot dragonfish as well as a marine biologist and
author Richard Ellis discusses in his book Singing Whales and
(26:29):
Flying Squid the discovery of marine life. So to put
that in perspective, uh, I believe the largest known dragonfish
at the time was a mere fifteen inches in length. Wow.
I mean, if you look up what dragonfish look like
they are. It is terrifying to imagine a six foot
long one. It's kind of like uh. In fact, I
would compare it very much to the discovery of the
(26:51):
six ft long Cambrian predator Anomali carras right. Uh. That
the idea that something that creepy could get that big
is really disturbing. Yeah. So these these creatures were members
of the order Stomaformes, which also includes the viper fish,
which Bebe also notes on his dives. Now, in the
introduction uh to the novel Starfish Uh, the author Peter Watts,
(27:16):
who was also also as a marine biology background, he
mentions bb having reported a seven foot viper fish. Now,
I don't I don't doubt Wat's in this, but I
can't personally find a reference to this particular sighting. But
then again, I didn't look at all of the scientific
papers that that baby put out over the years. But
(27:37):
but he certainly mentions viperfish in his biography and the
idea if you look up a picture of a viperfish, again,
it's very much like like the dragonfish. This, uh, this
sharp tooth, long, fierce, eel like creature. And to imagine
a seven foot version of this a swimming past you
as you're cramped in your steel beach ball. It's just
(27:58):
terrifying to imagine. Well, it swims up to the window
to say, hey, I'm here to vaush and vipe your windows.
What is that from? Oh, you don't remember that story
the Viper? No? I think it was in It was
in that book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. No,
I remember the book, or at least the illustration. Yeah, well,
bad joke if it didn't land. Sorry, I mean no, no, no,
(28:19):
I mean there's a story called the Viper about a
guy who keeps calling on the phone who says like,
I am the Viper and I'm coming, And somebody gets
really scared because the Viper is coming. And then finally
when the viper gets there, he says he's there to
vaush and vipe the windows because he's really the viper. Right, Okay, No,
I think the joke will work for people who know
the reference. I just didn't catch it. Jokes are always
better when you spend a few minutes explaining him, you know.
(28:41):
All right, Well, let's move on to another sighting that
BB reported that of the Great Fish, and I believe
we read a little bit from this one at the
top of the first episode. Oh yeah, yeah, So what
was this great fish? Well, he describes it essentially, it's
just this wall of flesh passing him by and the
ain't light, something that he guess to be about twenty
(29:02):
ft long, and it could have been a number of things.
So he he thinks it might have been some manner
of whale, and it could have been It could have
been a sperm whale for instance, which is, as we've
discussed on the show in our Leviathan episode, is a
large creature and it can and it can dive much
deeper than the bathmosphere and can get much bigger than
(29:23):
correct yes, uh now, However, it's also been brought up
so that it could have been some kind of a
deep sea shark, because in ninetive marine biologists managed a
glimpse and photograph six skill sharks at a depth of
the two thousand, four hundred and sixty ft and and
so Ellis suggests that it's possible that Beebe could have
seen this, or perhaps a deep sea shark such as
(29:45):
the Greenland shark, whose range apparently includes Bermudo's waters. Okay,
now you know one of everybody's favorite deep sea creatures is,
of course the Tricksie angler fish. Oh yes, because the
image of the angler fish with its large, gaping mouth
and sharp teeth, and then that that that strange bioluminescent
(30:05):
lure that hangs in front of it. I mean, it's
just such an amazing looking creature. And that's without even
getting into it's extremely bizarre reproductive methods with the tiny male.
The tiny male that's like a little reproductive heat seeker
that infuses with their body. Yeah, we've discussed that on
the show before, but he did have a run in
(30:26):
with the angler fish. Here's another quote from half mile
down quote. Another interesting fish on this trip was one
which I saw by the light of our electric beam
at nine feet on the way up. It was one
of the true giant female anglerfish, a full two feet
in length, with enormous mouth and teeth, deep and thick,
with a long tentacle arising from the top of its head.
(30:47):
I saw no light from this, but it was distinct
for a moment in the surrounding illumination. Twice its mouth
opened and partially shut, and then we passed out of
its life. Three of these weird fish have been taken
dead at the surface, but three years of intensive trawling
have given us no hint of their presence here. For
a few seconds, I was within ten feet of one,
(31:08):
and the memory will never leave me. Yeah, I'd guess
in the steel ball in the deep you make a
lot of memories, alright. So one of the things we've
discussed here is that so many many of these sightings
were can definitely be backed up. Many of these sightings
were of creatures that are known to science, and we
(31:29):
have specimens for them. But there's a mystery. Yeah, I
mean it is necessarily subjective reporting. Like we said, the
photography of the time could not capture things. So now
if you take a deep sea subdown, you can videotape
the whole thing, so you can prove what you saw
when you came back here, we have to rely on
the word of the people who were in the bathmosphere
looking out right, and that led even scientists at the
(31:52):
time to question some of it. So if theologists Carl Hubbs,
for instance, he had some issues with the reported bioluminescence,
and he suggested in nineteen thirty three quote, I am
forced to suggest that whatever the author saw might have
been a phosphorescency linter rate whose lights were beautified by
(32:13):
halation in passing through a misty film breathed onto the
quartz window by Mr BB's eagerly oppressed faith. I like
the snooty voice you give hubs there, Well, I get
I do get a very like snooty intellectual, like stuffy
academic vibe here saying who is this this science popularizer? Uh,
(32:34):
you know, without an advanced degree, daring to report on
the secrets of the deep. Yeah, I mean you're naturally
I think a modern person is sort of naturally inclined
to be on BB side here, especially because of like
we see him being criticized for non legitimate reasons, like
you're hiring women researchers that you know that's a nonsense.
So you you kind of like naturally want to say, like, Okay,
(32:57):
if people are coming at him with criticisms, they're out fair,
but some criticisms might be fair while other ones aren't. Yeah,
I mean it comes back around the fact that we
are depending upon his observations and the observations of Otis
and and in many cases one it's not like both
of them saw the same thing. They're looking out of
different windows. There are several cases where Baby says, oh,
(33:19):
and then Otis saw this creature, and I really wish
I could have seen it, but I didn't, Or likewise,
it's something that only bb saw and Otis was looking
at something else. Now, in all of this, I'm personally
inclined to believe Bbe, or at least I really want
to believe him, and I and I have. I have
not conducted in like an exhaustive analysis of his personality
(33:43):
or anything, but based on what we've read about him
and his work, he seems to be to have been
a very meticulous researcher who cared about accurately presenting uh,
what was going on in the ocean. Well, Ellis had
an opinion on that, right did he does? Yees? So
Ella rites quote. It is possible that Bebe was the
only person ever to see these mysterious creatures. It is
(34:05):
also possible that he made them up. But although he
wrote very cleverly and well, there is very little in
his published work to indicate that he was a practical
joker now to play Devil's advocate, though Ellis does point
out that Bab might have possibly joked at one point
about lights being those of quote a giant toadfish, and
that perhaps BB, having neither a graduate or undergraduate degree,
(34:29):
wanted to quote put one over on the academics. Uh,
and it's it's It's also worth noting that he would
have not been the first to play such a prank.
Ellis points to a nineteen thirty three prank by Australian
a theologist Gilbert Whitley, and he makes the point that
BB would have known that his observations were fairly safe
(34:50):
for the Fresievil future. So, in other words, he could
have made something up and known that, hey, if future
explorers come down to the same part of the ocean,
the same depth and they don't see it, that in
no way disproves what I'm claiming to have seen his
reports quote would it would enter the literature as they
have done, with virtually no possibility of being discounted. It is,
(35:12):
after all, one of the basic tenets of cryptozoology that
negative evidence cannot be disproved, a fact beloved by chupacabra
movie purveyors everywhere. So Ellis stresses that, look, we we
simply don't know another thousand or ten thousand dives might
be required to to really prove any of this out.
But he says that the very fact that that that
(35:33):
that some of these specimens have not been seen since
Bebe that that casts their existence into doubt. But now, also,
as I think we have said before, Bebe did see
some things that were not known about at the time
but have since been verified. Yeah. I mean in the
vast majority of the deep sea fishes he describes are
confirmed by specimens uh. And in one case, the quote
(35:54):
untouchable bathosphere fish uh did turn out to be a
species of dragonfish later found to inhabit the middle layers
of the ocean where he reported them. So for many
of these great creatures, perhaps we simply haven't seen them. Again,
the ocean is a big place and one that contains
plenty of mystery. Perhaps these species have suffered or gone
extinct due to the due to the damage that humans
(36:16):
have inflicted on the ocean. That's highly possible, yeah, Or
as we've discussed, perhaps these creatures were more easily seen
by the silent, motorless bathmosphere as it descended through the depths.
The aquatic environment, after all, is quite vulnerable to sound
and to go back into the differences of the general
methods of of sampling the depths you you if you've
(36:37):
got the Gilgamesh method and the eb zoom method. There
are plenty of species that are not very easily picked
up by various kinds of Ebba zoom methods. Like whether
you're trawling with the net or trying to drag dredge along,
whatever you're doing, there's some species that just tend not
to get caught like that. Yeah, Now, one thing I
do want to throw in here is that in some
(36:57):
of these discussions of of the more mysterious creatures, it
tends to it tends to fall into extremes. Right, either
he definitely saw something that we have not seen since,
or he just made it up without really without really
addressing the fact that there are a number of possible
variations between those two extremes. I mean, it was dark
(37:17):
down there, it was dark. They're they're just getting glimpses
of things. So I would I would counter with, isn't
it possible that he saw some of these things but
misjudged their size, that he later remembered them a little differently,
Like I don't think it is necessary for for b
B to be a prankster or a liar for him
to have misreported something that he that he thought he saw. Oh,
(37:40):
I totally agree there, yea. And so you know, speaking
for myself, I'm not inclined to really entertain some of
these more nefarious interpretations of his observations. I was a
little thrown when he saw the crack in the size
of an island. Wait, that wasn't b B. I'm always
confusing BB with those medieval Norwegians. Well, this does raise
the question if he if he was to make something up,
(38:02):
like why didn't he go even broader with his descriptions. Yeah,
but I don't know that. Again, we're getting into into
areas of pure speculation here. Well, I I like this
because it sort of brings us back to the fact
that we were discussing earlier and in the last episode
about how we know a lot more about the deep
than we used to, but we still don't know tons
(38:24):
of stuff about the deep oceans. The deep oceans are
it's almost a cliche to say now because people emphasize
it so much, but it's very true. They're they're entirely
alien to us. We know very little about them. Yeah,
it's it's been reported that of the ocean is unexplored. Uh.
And and and that's to say it hasn't even been
seen with human eyes. Yeah, I know there are various
(38:47):
ways of people disputing that figure, but suffice to say
that even large portions of the ocean that are sort
of roughly mapped have not actually been seen. Yeah. As
of two thousand fourteen, less than point zero five percent
of the ocean floor had been mapped to a level
of detail useful for detecting items such as the wreckage
(39:09):
of airplanes or the spires of undersea volcanic vents. And
I've seen a higher stat in recent years. For instance,
according to the Unseen Oceans exhibit at the American Museum
of Natural History, only ten to fiftcent of the sea
floor is revealed to us inaccuracy. And in either case,
ultimately we know more about the surface of Mars than
(39:29):
the sea floor of our own planet. Part of the
issue there, of course, is that we can't use satellites
uh to map the sea floor in the same way
that we can use satellites to map the surface of Mars.
We have to depend on things like sonar and to
to do it. Yeah, But at the same time, as
we've said, we know a lot more than we used
to and it's exciting that there is so much more
(39:49):
to learn. Indeed, and I think that's why we keep
coming back to the ocean. On Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
we talk about the mysteries of outer space, we talk
about the mysteries of the inner mind, and of course
we're going to keep talking about the mysteries of the ocean.
I mean, there's no dragonfish in space. It's true, like
the ocean is the mysterious realm in which we know
there is alien life and keep discovering new forms. There
(40:13):
may be dragonfish in the mind, yes, oh, undoubtedly they're
dragonfish in the mind. But but in in the ocean
we can actually pull them up and uh and poke
at them. Though how much better to go down and
observe them in the natural habitat rather than pulling them up.
And so that's the legacy of William bb in the bathmosphere.
That's right, the modern Gilgamesh. You should put it all right, Well, hey,
(40:37):
be sure to check out Stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. That's where you'll find this episode, the previous episode,
and all the other episodes of the podcast. As well
as blog posts and links out to our various social
media accounts. Thanks as always to our audio producers Alex
Williams and Torry Harrison. If you would like to get
in touch with us to let us know feedback about
this episode or any other episode, to let us know
(40:57):
a topic you think maybe we should cover in a
few sure, just to say hi and let us know
your your thoughts. You can email us at blow the
Mind at how stuff works dot com for more onness
(41:18):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
dot com bo
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's
time to go into the vault for part two of
our exploration of William Beebe and the Bathosphere. That's right.
This episode originally aired March eighteen, technically not even a
year ago, but we're re airing the Bathosphere episodes because
they concerned the deep ocean and the mysteries of the deep.
(00:28):
And we've got a new fiction podcast venture launching January
thirty one, titled Transgenesis UM that I wrote and created
and worked with a whole host of people here at
How Stuff Works and people from outside the organization, including Joe.
Joe's on the podcast as well. Oh I am, oh, yeah,
I guess I am. Yeah. So everyone should should tune
in for that. If you want to check that venture out,
(00:50):
head on over to Transgenesis dot show. That's the website. Uh.
And also, I think by the time you're listening to this,
you should be able to look up Transgenesis and begin
subscribing to it. If not, that'll be coming soon. We're
all so excited about that. Robert, you shouldn't sound so
bashful you should be shouting from the rooftops. Well, it's
still early days. I'm working up to shouting. So hopefully
(01:11):
the next of all episodes, I'll do more shouting. Okay,
Transgenesis is coming also check that out. But today please
enjoy part two of our exploration of the atmosphere. Welcome
to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
(01:35):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part two of our two part exploration
of the depths of the see the History of Knowledge
and Exploration of the deep Sea. And this this time
we're really going to be focusing in on William b. B.
That's right. We we alluded to him at the beginning
of the last episode. So he was an American naturalist, explorer, author,
(01:59):
uh he of from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen sixty two,
and h he was. He was a very interesting fellow,
just to put it mildly. Before there was Neil de Grass,
Dyson or Carl Sagan or even Jacques Gusteau, there was
William Beebe, who some writers have called the first celebrity scientist.
(02:20):
So he traveled around and lectured, he wrote books, he recruited,
we received quite a bit of media coverage, and he
was actually in writing books. He was a good writer,
this thing that helps. Yeah, he was a good popularizer
of science. He was a great science communicator before this
was really that much of a thing. Yeah, I often
think of Darwin as a great science communicator, but yeah,
(02:42):
Beebe really took it to the next level, especially as
we'll talk about in a minute, by employing all kinds
of people to help spread the message of scientific discoveries
in ways that are easily digestible to the public. Yeah.
So he he was an ornithologist at the New York
Zoological Society and uh he he actually left college before
(03:03):
completing his degree in order to to to work, uh
for for the society. But he just he's one of
these guys who just seemed to really just ascend once
he you know, once he hit the ground working he
was he would have ended up being becoming the founder
of the Society's Department of Tropical Research. And he conducted
he conducted research, it's worth noting across two world wars
(03:26):
and the Great Depression, like that was the time period,
the Trying time period, a time when most of the
energy in the world seemed to be aimed at either
conducting warfare, surviving warfare, surviving economic depression. UH. But he
was able to successfully carry out a great deal of
research and UH and then communicate the Department of the
(03:49):
Tropical Researches work as well. And to do this he
enlisted not only scientists but also historians, writers, and artists.
And by this I mean he took artists with him
on his expedition, generating some really captivating artwork and b
B himself sketched the creatures that he saw in the depths.
I mean. It's really kind of surprising, however, though, that that,
given that he was such a celebrity at the time, uh,
(04:13):
that that we don't see him celebrated as much in
pop culture today. Like he's certainly again, he's remembered, it's
not like he's forgotten and lost to history. But you
would just think that he would have more of a
like a tesla status today. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I
will say that again. Before we went to this recent
(04:34):
exhibit at the American Museum and Natural History in New
York about the Unseen Depths of the Ocean had some
stuff about BB before that. I think maybe I was
a little bit aware of him, but didn't really know anything.
And that's crazy, because his life and his work was
so interesting. Yeah, I mean for starters, he influenced a
number of notable people. Um For instance, E. O. Wilson,
(04:57):
who we've discussed on the show before, has has pointed
to William Beebe as someone who inspired his scientific career. Yeah.
There are a lot of interesting things about Bebe's legacy.
One cool one that does get mentioned sometimes is the
fact that he was criticized during his life for hiring
and mentoring female researchers, which a lot of irritable sexist
(05:19):
establishment scientists of the time thought was an indication that
his work was not serious or was unprofessional. Uh, of
course they were wrong, right. BB helped give a leg
up to a great scientists like Joscelyn Crane, who studied,
among other things, invertebrate ethology, so the behavior of invertebrates,
with a special focus on fiddler crabs, and also the
explorer and research scientists Gloria Hollister, who pioneered lab techniques
(05:43):
for preparing marine specimens, and she herself actually performed a
dives in the capsule that we're gonna be talking about
more in this episode of the Bathosphere, the steel ball
that finally took us down into the depths. Some of
the females he employed were also artists as well. There's
actually a wonderful New York Times article that came out, uh,
(06:04):
just last year about an exhibition of various works from
this period that I recommend everyone check out it. If
you just look for William Bbe Department of Trapical Research illustrations,
you'll find it. And there's some just some fabulous illustrations
of say, the Bathosphere descending into the depths with strange
creatures swirling around it. Yeah, if you get a chance,
(06:24):
you should look up illustrations. Especially I would say of
the artist Elsa Bostelmann, who she was one of the
artists who accompanied his research, and she sketched and painted
what bb and and his companion Notice Barton saw in
the deep from the Bathosphere, which we're gonna be talking
about more later. But her work is just beautiful and
weird and superb. It's uh, it's excellent science art. Yeah,
(06:47):
for reasons that will become obvious as we proceed of
photography or certainly film was just not an option aboard
the Bathosphere, so they had to depend on sketches. Uh.
And and also just you have considered the time during
which all this have taken place. For instance, so one
of his dives was actually broadcast on NBC Radio, which
(07:07):
is a testament to the popularity of his work, but
also just shows you the limitations of the visual technology
at the time. Now. Of course, another great weird note
in pop culture is that BB's collaborator Otis Barton, who
was his his co pilot in the Bathisphere and one
of the people, I think the designer, the main designer
(07:28):
of the Bathosphere made a movie, made a movie based
on what they did. Yeah, Titans of the Deep. And
if you look at the poster art for this film,
and I'll try to include it on the landing page
for this episode, is stuff to blow your mind. It
creates certain expectations of the content. Yeah, I will say,
it's so it's supposed to be like a documentary film,
(07:49):
right they's they made it as a documentary apparently, And
even though it's like BB is mentioned uh on the
on the poster, it's really apparently BB wasn't himself super
involved in the production. Yeah, I've seen it actually described
as more of like an action movie or an exploitation
horror movie. I couldn't. I couldn't find this movie, so
(08:10):
I don't. I didn't get to watch it. Yeah I
would have. I was not able to find, uh, even
any footage from it or a trailer or what would
pass for a trailer. But you can definitely get a
sense of the vibe they were going for if you
just look at the poster, which of course has like
a vague whale shaped sea monster with this big saw
tooth face and then a dude with a harpoon poise
(08:31):
to hit it. It looks in composition like the much
later poster for the movie Journey to the Seventh Planet,
which is this nineteen sixty two sci fi barbecue about
a bunch of astronauts who fly out to explore Uranus
and then get this they essentially end up with a
d intellectualized version of the plot from Solaris and the
(08:53):
movie stars, of course, John agar Ah, yes a frequent
a frequent name for anyone's ever plunged the depths of
of B movies from that era. But if you look
at this poster for Journey to the Seventh Planet. It's
I don't know if it was actually inspired by Titans
of the Deep, but they look very similar to me.
I also found an image this was an advertisement. But
(09:15):
it turns out even Otis Barton, who accompanied William bb
in the Bathosphere. He was famous enough at the time
to appear in a camel advertisement for Camel cigarettes where
you see him featured there and he's saying, I smoke
as many camels as I like. They don't give me
jittery nerves. No, camels have a have a swell taste,
mild and yet with rich, mellow flavor. I smoked them
(09:37):
all in the Bathosphere. I don't I do not think
the bathosphere is a good smoking environment. Two packs per dive. Well,
we've been teasing it enough. I think maybe we should
take a quick break and then when we come back,
we should discuss the bathosphere itself. All right, thank thank alright,
we're back al right, So I will refer you to
(09:59):
an image like a photograph of the Bathosphere on the
landing page for this episode is stuff to blow your
mind dot com. But we're also going to describe it
for you here so no need to pull the car
over what have you. Depending on how you're listening to us. Okay, so,
as you're trying to imagine the Bathosphere, it's probably best
to dismiss some of your more modern and TV friendly
notions of exploratory submarines, because the bathosphere was less of
(10:25):
a submarine and more of just a death trap. Right.
It's like, would you like to get inside a bowling
ball and go to the bottom of the ocean? Yeah,
a steel ball that men climb inside and then it
is lowered into the ocean depths. Let's let's ask some questions.
Does this have a propeller? No? Does it have fins? No?
Does it have robotic arms? No? What does it have
(10:47):
really anything on the outside other than just a steel sphere?
I mean, basically, it is a steel bowling ball that
men climb inside through what what Baby referred to just
as the door? And then it has even door is
a little misleading, Yeah, I mean it's not really a door.
They got in through a hole that was then bolted shut. Right. See,
(11:09):
it's sealed shut like a like an iron casket. And
then it has these three uh, the three portals that
they look out off that look kind of like stubby eyestalks. So, Robert,
how big was the athmosphere that these two people got into? Well,
here's a here's a quick quote from Baby from his
biography half Mile Down, which which we're gonna refer to
(11:30):
a lot. If if if we read a quote quote
from Baby in this and we don't fully attribute it,
it's from half Mile Down. Baby says it was not
as tall as a man, measuring only four ft nine
inches in diameter, but its walls were everywhere an inch
and a quarter thick, and it weighed five thousand, four
hundred pounds. A first casting had weighed twice as much,
(11:51):
but it would have been too heavy for any of
the winches available in Bermuda. And was jumped. Now about
this steel ball. If you don't have an intuitive since
of numbers to physical scale, I want to pause for
a second and dwell on how tiny this is. You
can buy beach balls bigger than this undersea exploration vessel.
That's crazy. You included a picture here on our notes
(12:12):
showing what a sixty beach ball looks like next to
presumably an average sized individual. I guess there is probably
a tall guy, but but still imagine two of him
inside of it. That's unbelievable. And that's bigger than the
bathosphere was. This was this thing was tiny. People like
they were crammed inside. But there was a reason it
(12:34):
had to be that small, right, Yeah, because, as William J.
Broad points out in his book The Universe Below, the
smaller the sphere, the greater strength of its walls. If
you had more space in there, you need thicker walls,
which would of course mean increasing the weight of the thing.
So yeah, we run into the problem with with with
the winches that we've already discussed. It's almost like a
(12:55):
parallel of the problems of shielding from radiation in space,
right Like, you want to send up a spacecraft that
will protect the astronauts with really thick shielding in the walls,
but you've got a problem with getting so much mass
up into space that you know, you could have all
these really really thick walls. It's like a parallel to that.
You know, you you could have really really thick walls
(13:17):
to make sure you're super protected from the pressure and
you've got enough room to move around, but it just
gets harder and harder to get you down into the
depths and back up safely if you do that. Yeah.
So this was designed by BB an American engineer Otis Barton,
who already mentioned, and it featured three viewing portals and
these were This was not glass. You couldn't just look
out just normal glass because it needed to withstand the pressure.
(13:40):
This was fused quartz eight inches in diameter and three
inches thick, and the fittings again, they look like stubby
eye stalks. It's like a three eyed monster. Yeah. And
quartz was used because it was the quote strongest transparent
substance known and it transmits all wavelengths of light. Now,
earlier we mentioned the door that wasn't really a door.
(14:01):
What does BB say about the door. He describes it
as a quote round four hundred pound lid that quote
had to be lifted on and off by a block
and tackle and fitted snugly over ten large bolts around
the manhole. The ladder just big enough to permit the
passage of a slender human body. Babe was a very
slender guy, we should point out. I've seen pictures of
(14:21):
him and he is spind lee. Now on top of that,
let's discuss some of the other attributes of physical attributes
of the bathosphere. It had a single external light, just
one thousand watts and one light and you've flipped it
on or off from inside. And the sphere was lowered
on a single steel, non twisting cable nearly an inch
(14:42):
in diameter with a breaking strain of twenty nine tons
or a dozen bathispheres. Okay, So they wanted to be
real safe because, of course, if that cable breaks, you're
in a world a hurt. Yeah, you're you're done for,
and you have to worry about more than just the
what happens if the cable breaks, So you have to
worry about, well, what if they're stormy weather, et cetera.
Now you mentioned there's a light on the thing, so
(15:03):
that means they got to get power down there somehow. Yeah,
So they had an additional cable that carried both the
electrical power and the telephone wires. Oh, telephone wires. So
they had to have some way to communicate with the service.
I assume they couldn't just tug on the cable. Yeah,
I don't think that would work. But but yeah, this
is this is kind of the limits of their connections
to the surface. They had electricity coming down and they
(15:25):
had that telephone wire. They did not have an air
tube coming down. No, but of course they had to breathe.
So the batmosphere included oxygen tanks with automatic valves. Uh.
That provided the atmosphere, and then they just had trays
of chemical setting out. I believe it was soda, lime,
and calcium chloride. Yeah. And this was to absorb moisture
(15:46):
and carbon dioxide. Yeah, because you don't just need fresh
air to breathe in, you need to scrub the carbon
dioxide that you're breathing out. Yeah. I would, I would
just want to drive home. How I mean, it's an
amazing invention, but how dangerously crude it can it can feel.
It reminds me of there was the film was it
The Voyagers the Explorers? Yes, where the kids build this
(16:11):
kind of spaceship that sets inside a like a magic
force field sphere. But they just build it, right, They
just constructed from what they have at hand, And there's
a there's a similar vibe with the bathosphere like that.
There's just it's just so ballsy to imagine climbing in
this thing and the depth. I mean, it is a
large ball, It is a it is a steel ball. Yes.
(16:35):
And even though it holds two divers and is essentially
a two man crew, uh BB says that the total
crew required to support this thing, uh, most of which
are going to be members on the surface. Uh, it
comes to around twenty eight people total, so two under
the water above the water. All right. So let's say
(16:57):
you're William Bbe and you're like, okay, I've got a
steel ball to die in. Um, where where are we
going to put this down in the water? Well, they
set their side some the deep seas off the coast
of Bermuda, UH, specifically a circular area about eight miles
in diameter near non Such Island, and here the depth
reached about a mile. The first dive occurred in nineteen thirty.
(17:17):
By June eleven, nineteen thirty, they'd reached a depth of
dred feet or four hundred meters, and in nineteen thirty
four they reached three thousand feet or nine hundred meters,
And that was, of course by far the world record.
That they went much lower than anybody had ever been
able to explore before. Yeah, they were really breaking new
grounds with this. Now, the bathosphere greatly improved humanity's ability
(17:41):
to explore the depths. Uh. But again it was it
was ultimately a risky vessel to use, and it was
soon replaced by safer designs, including the bath Escape, which
positioned a traditional bathosphere beneath a large float, and even
the likes of the modern deep sea channel You're famously
piloted by James Cameron that boasts a pilot sphere position
(18:04):
beneath the rest of the vessel. So you can think
of post bathosphere designs as just basically being the bathosphere
attached to a larger system of flotation, a submarine based submarine.
Basically like, let's attach this to a submarine that has power,
that has the ability to to to raise and lower
(18:25):
itself within the water. But the bathosphere was was just
the sphere, just the this uh, this steel container for
the humans to descend in. Having your own power really
does seem to make a difference, right, I Mean, there's
a huge difference between being in a submarine that can
move and just hanging in a ball on a thread. Yeah,
I mean just the psychological uh notion here, just the
(18:48):
idea that they have some if I if I get
tired of descending into the darkness of the deep sea,
then I can just I can. I can raise myself
out of this. I have some level of control, and
I'm not just hoping that everything is going okay up
there on the surface now. Of course, by virtue of
the fact that BB and his team went deeper than
anyone ever had before, he got to observe far more
(19:10):
than anyone ever had before. So I think we should
go into his scientific observations, and we'll do that right
after this break. Thank thank Alright, we're back. So William B.
B the modern Gilgamesh. He and his co pilot are
in the ball in the steel death trap, sinking down, down,
down into the ocean, deeper than anybody's ever gone before,
(19:31):
and looking out the portholes to see what they can see.
So let's talk about what they see. What did they
discover through this research method? Well? BB observed and sketched
again because cameras of the day were largely useless given
the conditions of the bathosphere in its environment. But he
described a world quote stranger than any imagination could have conceived,
(19:51):
and he writes about it very beautifully. Oh yeah, and
and he really brought the results. Between seven b B
and his team caught more than a hundred and fifteen
thousand animals from two hundred and twenty species, many many
of which were new to science, so they were combining
different research methods at the same time. Now, before we
(20:11):
get into some of the specific creatures that he saw
claim to have seen, uh, we should probably just talk
about his experience with darkness and light, because ultimately that
is the I mean that, that's kind of the defining
experience that he describes. Oh, exactly, so bb Right's quote,
in the course of the half mile down, although my
eyes were perfectly dark adapted, I could detect not the
(20:35):
faintest glimmer of light from seventeen hundred feet down, So,
as far as the human eye was concerned, conditions of
absolute darkness existed at these deeper levels. And then he says,
from seventeen hundred feet down, animal light is the only
external source of illumination. So of course they did have
a light they could flip on, but they didn't want
to do that all the time, right, because that would
(20:56):
be affecting and changing the environment, So they didn't do
that at always. They would try to see often just
what they could see in the dark that was self illuminated.
And when you go that far down. There actually are
very many bioluminescent creatures that will illuminate themselves for you
to see. But they'll also illuminate the water so that
you can see other animals around them. And BB writes quote,
(21:18):
Occasionally the head of a fish would appear conspicuously against
the surrounding black, illumined by some indirect source of unknown lighting.
Eyes especially stood out, with no definite source of light visible.
When teeth were thus silhouetted, I knew it was from
a luminous mucus which covered them. Cheek lights flashed and
dimmed or vanished altogether, showing some control other than the
(21:41):
usual disappearance into an opaque epidermal trench. And I should
mention those last quotes I provided came from a paper
he published in Proceedings to the National Academy of Sciences
in nineteen thirty two or thirty three. Yeah, he was
extremely impressed by the display of bioluminescence as as he descended,
so he noted the lights of fish, jellies, and various
(22:04):
animals that he couldn't really identify in passing. And it
was something of a revelation to him. About a third
of a mile down he saw something that he described
as a quote pyrotechnic network and was and it was
quote so delicate and evanescent that its abyssal form is
quite lost if we ever take it in our nets.
(22:24):
So in other words, if we were just to pull
this up, you know what, what would we have. We
would have maybe some shriveled mass, but we certainly would
not have this floating bioluminescent thing that I'm witnessing right now. Well,
in the last episode, we talked about the c cucumber
that turns to red kool aid. Here you would guests
turn into buyo luminescent kool aid. And then there's this,
(22:46):
there's this, this description of the abyssal rainbow cars, which
will come back to later on. He says, at eleven
seventeen o'clock, I turned the light on suddenly and saw
a strange quartet of fish to which I have not
been able to fit genus or family, shape, size, color,
and one fin I saw clearly. But ourbistle rainbow guards
(23:07):
is as far as I dare go, you know, words
these saying that's as far as I dare go, and
classifying it and naming it quote and they may be anything,
but guards about four inches overall. They were slender and stiff,
with long, sharply pointed jaws. And it's worth noting no
one has ever captured a specimen quite like this, nor
seen it. Uh And this, this is one of the
(23:31):
mysteries that arises from William Beebe's observations, specimens that have
have not been caught or even witnessed again, and we're
left to wonder what what did he see? Right? Did
he have access somehow to to seeing things no one
has actually seen since then? Or was he mistaken? Did
he think he was seeing something that he actually wasn't
(23:53):
or was he making it up? I mean, I don't
want to think he was making it up, but I
guess we have to consider that as a possibility. Yeah,
and we'll we'll touch on that some of the thinking
on that a little later. But but one thing we
should go ahead and drive home here is that again,
the bathosphere did not have an engine on it. It
did not have propellers. It was a very silent affair
in a realm where where sound truly carries and can
(24:17):
have damaging effects. Especially our modern uh are, our modern
state of affairs with with with ships and sonar, but
even just a noisy submarine would have potentially scared away
various species. So there is an argument to be made
here that the bathosphere, as it's descending rather silently and
at times uh an incomplete darkness, would have attracted or
(24:42):
been or at least would not have have frightened away
species that would recoil from a modern exploratory submarine. That's interesting,
and that's that's a good point to keep in mind
as we go on and discuss some more of the
things he recorded seeing. I think if you have the
ability while you're listening, you should look up some of
the art works of Elsa Bostelman. She was again one
(25:02):
of the artists who was doing sketches for for BB's team,
and so it would be great to have some of
those in front of your eyes while we're talking here. Now,
another variety of fish that BB reported seeing are the
dragon fish. These are different than sea dragons, right quote
a six inch dragonfish or still Maya's past lights first
visible than three seconds of searchlight for identification, then lights alone.
(25:26):
And there seemed no reason why we should not swing
the door open and swing swim out. Now I can
think of various reasons not to do that, bab, But
I understand that he's trying to capture his excitement here.
It's the deep sea version of the thing, like you know,
the sudden desire to the call of the void, right yeah, yeah,
or the desire to like swerve into oncoming traffic. So
(25:48):
he was this was his guests that these were dragonfish.
And again we have to put ourselves in the bathmosphere
and imagine peering out through these tiny uh courtz lenses
at at things just swimming by, sometimes lingering but maybe not,
sometimes wholly visible for a few seconds, sometimes only partially visible.
(26:09):
But he guessed that these were some variety of dragonfish. Uh.
And the particular species that he was describing was unknown
to science at the time, but he was familiar with
other species of stomias. Now he apparently reported seeing a
six foot dragonfish as well as a marine biologist and
author Richard Ellis discusses in his book Singing Whales and
(26:29):
Flying Squid the discovery of marine life. So to put
that in perspective, uh, I believe the largest known dragonfish
at the time was a mere fifteen inches in length. Wow.
I mean, if you look up what dragonfish look like
they are. It is terrifying to imagine a six foot
long one. It's kind of like uh. In fact, I
would compare it very much to the discovery of the
(26:51):
six ft long Cambrian predator Anomali carras right. Uh. That
the idea that something that creepy could get that big
is really disturbing. Yeah. So these these creatures were members
of the order Stomaformes, which also includes the viper fish,
which Bebe also notes on his dives. Now, in the
introduction uh to the novel Starfish Uh, the author Peter Watts,
(27:16):
who was also also as a marine biology background, he
mentions bb having reported a seven foot viper fish. Now,
I don't I don't doubt Wat's in this, but I
can't personally find a reference to this particular sighting. But
then again, I didn't look at all of the scientific
papers that that baby put out over the years. But
(27:37):
but he certainly mentions viperfish in his biography and the
idea if you look up a picture of a viperfish, again,
it's very much like like the dragonfish. This, uh, this
sharp tooth, long, fierce, eel like creature. And to imagine
a seven foot version of this a swimming past you
as you're cramped in your steel beach ball. It's just
(27:58):
terrifying to imagine. Well, it swims up to the window
to say, hey, I'm here to vaush and vipe your windows.
What is that from? Oh, you don't remember that story
the Viper? No? I think it was in It was
in that book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. No,
I remember the book, or at least the illustration. Yeah, well,
bad joke if it didn't land. Sorry, I mean no, no, no,
(28:19):
I mean there's a story called the Viper about a
guy who keeps calling on the phone who says like,
I am the Viper and I'm coming, And somebody gets
really scared because the Viper is coming. And then finally
when the viper gets there, he says he's there to
vaush and vipe the windows because he's really the viper. Right, Okay, No,
I think the joke will work for people who know
the reference. I just didn't catch it. Jokes are always
better when you spend a few minutes explaining him, you know.
(28:41):
All right, Well, let's move on to another sighting that
BB reported that of the Great Fish, and I believe
we read a little bit from this one at the
top of the first episode. Oh yeah, yeah, So what
was this great fish? Well, he describes it essentially, it's
just this wall of flesh passing him by and the
ain't light, something that he guess to be about twenty
(29:02):
ft long, and it could have been a number of things.
So he he thinks it might have been some manner
of whale, and it could have been It could have
been a sperm whale for instance, which is, as we've
discussed on the show in our Leviathan episode, is a
large creature and it can and it can dive much
deeper than the bathmosphere and can get much bigger than
(29:23):
correct yes, uh now, However, it's also been brought up
so that it could have been some kind of a
deep sea shark, because in ninetive marine biologists managed a
glimpse and photograph six skill sharks at a depth of
the two thousand, four hundred and sixty ft and and
so Ellis suggests that it's possible that Beebe could have
seen this, or perhaps a deep sea shark such as
(29:45):
the Greenland shark, whose range apparently includes Bermudo's waters. Okay,
now you know one of everybody's favorite deep sea creatures is,
of course the Tricksie angler fish. Oh yes, because the
image of the angler fish with its large, gaping mouth
and sharp teeth, and then that that that strange bioluminescent
(30:05):
lure that hangs in front of it. I mean, it's
just such an amazing looking creature. And that's without even
getting into it's extremely bizarre reproductive methods with the tiny male.
The tiny male that's like a little reproductive heat seeker
that infuses with their body. Yeah, we've discussed that on
the show before, but he did have a run in
(30:26):
with the angler fish. Here's another quote from half mile
down quote. Another interesting fish on this trip was one
which I saw by the light of our electric beam
at nine feet on the way up. It was one
of the true giant female anglerfish, a full two feet
in length, with enormous mouth and teeth, deep and thick,
with a long tentacle arising from the top of its head.
(30:47):
I saw no light from this, but it was distinct
for a moment in the surrounding illumination. Twice its mouth
opened and partially shut, and then we passed out of
its life. Three of these weird fish have been taken
dead at the surface, but three years of intensive trawling
have given us no hint of their presence here. For
a few seconds, I was within ten feet of one,
(31:08):
and the memory will never leave me. Yeah, I'd guess
in the steel ball in the deep you make a
lot of memories, alright. So one of the things we've
discussed here is that so many many of these sightings
were can definitely be backed up. Many of these sightings
were of creatures that are known to science, and we
(31:29):
have specimens for them. But there's a mystery. Yeah, I
mean it is necessarily subjective reporting. Like we said, the
photography of the time could not capture things. So now
if you take a deep sea subdown, you can videotape
the whole thing, so you can prove what you saw
when you came back here, we have to rely on
the word of the people who were in the bathmosphere
looking out right, and that led even scientists at the
(31:52):
time to question some of it. So if theologists Carl Hubbs,
for instance, he had some issues with the reported bioluminescence,
and he suggested in nineteen thirty three quote, I am
forced to suggest that whatever the author saw might have
been a phosphorescency linter rate whose lights were beautified by
(32:13):
halation in passing through a misty film breathed onto the
quartz window by Mr BB's eagerly oppressed faith. I like
the snooty voice you give hubs there, Well, I get
I do get a very like snooty intellectual, like stuffy
academic vibe here saying who is this this science popularizer? Uh,
(32:34):
you know, without an advanced degree, daring to report on
the secrets of the deep. Yeah, I mean you're naturally
I think a modern person is sort of naturally inclined
to be on BB side here, especially because of like
we see him being criticized for non legitimate reasons, like
you're hiring women researchers that you know that's a nonsense.
So you you kind of like naturally want to say, like, Okay,
(32:57):
if people are coming at him with criticisms, they're out fair,
but some criticisms might be fair while other ones aren't. Yeah,
I mean it comes back around the fact that we
are depending upon his observations and the observations of Otis
and and in many cases one it's not like both
of them saw the same thing. They're looking out of
different windows. There are several cases where Baby says, oh,
(33:19):
and then Otis saw this creature, and I really wish
I could have seen it, but I didn't, Or likewise,
it's something that only bb saw and Otis was looking
at something else. Now, in all of this, I'm personally
inclined to believe Bbe, or at least I really want
to believe him, and I and I have. I have
not conducted in like an exhaustive analysis of his personality
(33:43):
or anything, but based on what we've read about him
and his work, he seems to be to have been
a very meticulous researcher who cared about accurately presenting uh,
what was going on in the ocean. Well, Ellis had
an opinion on that, right did he does? Yees? So
Ella rites quote. It is possible that Bebe was the
only person ever to see these mysterious creatures. It is
(34:05):
also possible that he made them up. But although he
wrote very cleverly and well, there is very little in
his published work to indicate that he was a practical
joker now to play Devil's advocate, though Ellis does point
out that Bab might have possibly joked at one point
about lights being those of quote a giant toadfish, and
that perhaps BB, having neither a graduate or undergraduate degree,
(34:29):
wanted to quote put one over on the academics. Uh,
and it's it's It's also worth noting that he would
have not been the first to play such a prank.
Ellis points to a nineteen thirty three prank by Australian
a theologist Gilbert Whitley, and he makes the point that
BB would have known that his observations were fairly safe
(34:50):
for the Fresievil future. So, in other words, he could
have made something up and known that, hey, if future
explorers come down to the same part of the ocean,
the same depth and they don't see it, that in
no way disproves what I'm claiming to have seen his
reports quote would it would enter the literature as they
have done, with virtually no possibility of being discounted. It is,
(35:12):
after all, one of the basic tenets of cryptozoology that
negative evidence cannot be disproved, a fact beloved by chupacabra
movie purveyors everywhere. So Ellis stresses that, look, we we
simply don't know another thousand or ten thousand dives might
be required to to really prove any of this out.
But he says that the very fact that that that
(35:33):
that some of these specimens have not been seen since
Bebe that that casts their existence into doubt. But now, also,
as I think we have said before, Bebe did see
some things that were not known about at the time
but have since been verified. Yeah. I mean in the
vast majority of the deep sea fishes he describes are
confirmed by specimens uh. And in one case, the quote
(35:54):
untouchable bathosphere fish uh did turn out to be a
species of dragonfish later found to inhabit the middle layers
of the ocean where he reported them. So for many
of these great creatures, perhaps we simply haven't seen them. Again,
the ocean is a big place and one that contains
plenty of mystery. Perhaps these species have suffered or gone
extinct due to the due to the damage that humans
(36:16):
have inflicted on the ocean. That's highly possible, yeah, Or
as we've discussed, perhaps these creatures were more easily seen
by the silent, motorless bathmosphere as it descended through the depths.
The aquatic environment, after all, is quite vulnerable to sound
and to go back into the differences of the general
methods of of sampling the depths you you if you've
(36:37):
got the Gilgamesh method and the eb zoom method. There
are plenty of species that are not very easily picked
up by various kinds of Ebba zoom methods. Like whether
you're trawling with the net or trying to drag dredge along,
whatever you're doing, there's some species that just tend not
to get caught like that. Yeah, Now, one thing I
do want to throw in here is that in some
(36:57):
of these discussions of of the more mysterious creatures, it
tends to it tends to fall into extremes. Right, either
he definitely saw something that we have not seen since,
or he just made it up without really without really
addressing the fact that there are a number of possible
variations between those two extremes. I mean, it was dark
(37:17):
down there, it was dark. They're they're just getting glimpses
of things. So I would I would counter with, isn't
it possible that he saw some of these things but
misjudged their size, that he later remembered them a little differently,
Like I don't think it is necessary for for b
B to be a prankster or a liar for him
to have misreported something that he that he thought he saw. Oh,
(37:40):
I totally agree there, yea. And so you know, speaking
for myself, I'm not inclined to really entertain some of
these more nefarious interpretations of his observations. I was a
little thrown when he saw the crack in the size
of an island. Wait, that wasn't b B. I'm always
confusing BB with those medieval Norwegians. Well, this does raise
the question if he if he was to make something up,
(38:02):
like why didn't he go even broader with his descriptions. Yeah,
but I don't know that. Again, we're getting into into
areas of pure speculation here. Well, I I like this
because it sort of brings us back to the fact
that we were discussing earlier and in the last episode
about how we know a lot more about the deep
than we used to, but we still don't know tons
(38:24):
of stuff about the deep oceans. The deep oceans are
it's almost a cliche to say now because people emphasize
it so much, but it's very true. They're they're entirely
alien to us. We know very little about them. Yeah,
it's it's been reported that of the ocean is unexplored. Uh.
And and and that's to say it hasn't even been
seen with human eyes. Yeah, I know there are various
(38:47):
ways of people disputing that figure, but suffice to say
that even large portions of the ocean that are sort
of roughly mapped have not actually been seen. Yeah. As
of two thousand fourteen, less than point zero five percent
of the ocean floor had been mapped to a level
of detail useful for detecting items such as the wreckage
(39:09):
of airplanes or the spires of undersea volcanic vents. And
I've seen a higher stat in recent years. For instance,
according to the Unseen Oceans exhibit at the American Museum
of Natural History, only ten to fiftcent of the sea
floor is revealed to us inaccuracy. And in either case,
ultimately we know more about the surface of Mars than
(39:29):
the sea floor of our own planet. Part of the
issue there, of course, is that we can't use satellites
uh to map the sea floor in the same way
that we can use satellites to map the surface of Mars.
We have to depend on things like sonar and to
to do it. Yeah, But at the same time, as
we've said, we know a lot more than we used
to and it's exciting that there is so much more
(39:49):
to learn. Indeed, and I think that's why we keep
coming back to the ocean. On Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
we talk about the mysteries of outer space, we talk
about the mysteries of the inner mind, and of course
we're going to keep talking about the mysteries of the ocean.
I mean, there's no dragonfish in space. It's true, like
the ocean is the mysterious realm in which we know
there is alien life and keep discovering new forms. There
(40:13):
may be dragonfish in the mind, yes, oh, undoubtedly they're
dragonfish in the mind. But but in in the ocean
we can actually pull them up and uh and poke
at them. Though how much better to go down and
observe them in the natural habitat rather than pulling them up.
And so that's the legacy of William bb in the bathmosphere.
That's right, the modern Gilgamesh. You should put it all right, Well, hey,
(40:37):
be sure to check out Stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. That's where you'll find this episode, the previous episode,
and all the other episodes of the podcast. As well
as blog posts and links out to our various social
media accounts. Thanks as always to our audio producers Alex
Williams and Torry Harrison. If you would like to get
in touch with us to let us know feedback about
this episode or any other episode, to let us know
(40:57):
a topic you think maybe we should cover in a
few sure, just to say hi and let us know
your your thoughts. You can email us at blow the
Mind at how stuff works dot com for more onness
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