William Beebe and Otis Barton Set Depth Record

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William Beebe and Otis Barton Set Depth Record

Overview

In the summer of 1930, William Beebe (1877-1962) and Otis Barton climbed into a cramped steel sphere attached by cable to a crane and were lowered over the side of a ship to a depth of over 1,000 feet (305 m)—at that time, the deepest dive ever made. Later dives brought them to a record depth of over 3,000 feet (914 m) a few years later. Beebe's vivid descriptions of the exotic life he saw sparked public interest, and, over the years, more deep-sea vessels were built, including free-moving vessels such as Trieste and Alvin. These vessels, and others that have explored the ocean depths, have returned enormous amounts of information to the surface, completely changing our view of life at great depths in the sea.

Background

The earliest record we have of any sort of underwater exploration dates to Alexander the Great, the Greek soldier and king who lived in the fourth century, b.c. Alexander is said to have descended into the ocean in a glass barrel covered with asses' skins. Between Alexander's time and the early twentieth century, manned underwater exploration scarcely changed, consisting primarily of short-term observations at shallow depths, primarily for lack of adequate systems to maintain a breathable atmosphere or to control the sea pressure. In fact, virtually all that was known of life below the depth of human dives came from nets and dredging the seafloor, neither of which (as we now know) return representative samples of the life that is present.

In the late 1920s, William Beebe, an ornithologist by training, became interested in the problems of deep-sea scientific exploration. He managed to interest an engineer, Otis Barton, in this problem. Together, they designed and constructed a steel sphere with three ports made of thick, fused quartz, the strongest known transparent substance. This sphere contained bottles of oxygen, canisters of chemicals to absorb water vapor and carbon dioxide, some scientific gear, and a telephone to the surface. This gear, and the two men were crammed into a sphere less than 5 feet (152 cm) in diameter.

To make their descent, Beebe and Barton climbed into the bathysphere, now hooked to a steel cable, and were lowered into the ocean. Following several manned and unmanned test dives, they finally reached a depth of 1,368 feet (417 m) on June 11, 1930. In constant telephone communication with their support ship, Beebe gave nonstop descriptions of changes in light levels and the strange new creatures visible beyond the portholes during their descent, stay, and subsequent recovery.

In subsequent dives, Beebe was lowered into the depths in many locations, all the while continuing to record his observations. In 1934, he and Barton made another record-breaking descent, this time to 3,028 feet (923 m), a record that was to stand for 15 years. These dives were not without risk. On several occasions, the bathysphere returned to the surface filled with water after a window seal failed and, on one manned dive, water began streaming in. In that instance, Beebe called the surface, asking to be lowered more quickly in the hopes that increasing sea pressure would force the window into its seals, a bet that paid off. In spite of the risk, however, Beebe continued to dive and to bring back a fantastic amount of information about life in the deep ocean.

Impact

There were three major areas in which the adventures of Beebe and Barton impacted society: 1. Scientists and engineers were encouraged to construct more advanced vessels with which to explore the ocean floor; 2. Science and society developed a better understanding and appreciation of the abundance and diversity of deep-sea life; 3. From this appreciation came a public fascination with both the deep sea and its denizens that made its way into popular culture in many ways.

For 15 years after Barton and Beebe's record-setting dive in 1934, their record remained unchallenged, primarily because World War II intervened. However, lessons learned in submarine construction were combined with research in ballooning by Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard (1884-1963), leading to construction of the bathyscaph, a vehicle designed to move independently. By severing the cable that tethered the bathysphere to the surface, Piccard was able to overcome the single greatest weakness of the bathysphere—lack of mobility. The bathysphere was completely dependent on support from the surface to control its depth, and it could not be readily moved laterally through the sea to follow intriguing animals. This frustrating lack of mobility was overcome by designing a vessel in which the bathysphere's steel sphere was suspended beneath a dirigible-like envelope filled with gasoline (which, unlike air, does not compress significantly with increasing sea pressure). Propellers were attached to the vessel, giving it lateral mobility, and a combination of venting gasoline or dropping ballast let it move vertically. Finally, an improved design gave this new vessel, the Trieste, the ability to descend to any depth in the oceans. In 1960 Trieste descended to the deepest point on Earth, 35,800 feet (10,912 m) in the Challenger Deep portion of the Mariana Trench, near the island of Guam.

Trieste and Trieste II were followed by Alvin and other deep-sea scientific submersibles, most of which were dedicated to the study of underwater geology and marine biology. Each successive generation of submersible was more maneuverable and more capable than the last, culminating in a number of small, agile, and relatively easy-to-use craft that debuted in the 1990s. While these vessels cannot dive as deeply as Trieste, they continue to return with enormous amounts of valuable scientific information. Among the findings made by these vehicles are continuing observations of deep-sea hydrothermal vents ("black smokers") and their unique colonies of life, studies of deep-water fish such as the Greenland shark, and searches for underwater archeological artifacts ranging from Roman galleys to gold-carrying steamships.

Before we explored the depths of the sea, most scientists had hypothesized that life either did not exist in deep waters or that the life there was very sparse and primitive. In addition, most scientists made the assumption that whatever life did exist probably survived on the occasional fish carcass that dropped through the water column to the sea floor. The actuality showed how naïve these assumptions were.

Barton described in breathless detail all the strange and wonderful fish he saw during his dives. Once below the reach of sunlight, he saw that many fish and other organisms were luminescent, showing up quite nicely even in the absence of external lights. He also noted that, in spite of the crushing pressures at 1,000 feet (305 m) (440 lb [200 kg] per square inch, or over 30 tons per square foot), life was not only present, but plentiful. Later dives, even those to the floor of the abyssal plains, showed that abundant life has colonized virtually every available part of every ocean, including the polar oceans.

More amazingly, much of this life is now known to have no connection at all with the surface. Until this discovery, the standard paradigm was that all life, however indirectly, depended on sunlight for its food. The discovery of tubeworm colonies, algal mats, and other forms of life surrounding hydrothermal vents that have absolutely no need for outside sources of energy or nutrition was a profound surprise to scientists. In addition to causing them to rethink their ideas of life on Earth, this also forced them to reconsider possibilities of life on other planets. In fact, current speculation about life on Europa, one of Jupiter's largest moons, would likely be purely in the realm of science fiction were it not for our knowledge of these deep-sea colonies found by deep-diving submersibles.

All of this has captured the public's imagination, perhaps more than Beebe would have guessed before his famous dive. Part of this fascination was sparked by Beebe, who wrote about his adventures in Half Mile Down. People were familiar with aquarium fish and those that showed up on their dinner plates, but Beebe described fish 20 feet (6 m) long that glowed while they swam through pitch-black waters. This was completely outside the realm of anyone's experience and sounded more like creatures from Jules Verne. As later expeditions brought back descriptions, photos, and specimens of even more bizarre creatures, the public's fascination continued to grow.

This interest manifested itself in several ways. Popular television shows like "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" may have lacked scientific and technical accuracy, but garnered large audiences week after week. Television specials, mostly by Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) and the National Geographic Society, often focused on life in the sea, again gaining large audiences on a regular basis. Popular books were written (including Barton's), and many magazines such as Smithsonian and National Geographic carried story after story about deep-sea life, geology, and other discoveries that were made in the sea. Many movies, such as The Abyss, focus on adventures in the deep sea.

P. ANDREW KARAM