Science: Deepest Down

”Gosh, it’s cold,” said Dr. Beebe, below.

”Wear your red flannels next time,” said Miss Hollister, above.

“A fish!—a big fish!—it’s six feet long!” cried Dr. Beebe.

“What kind is it?”

“It’s a pyrosoma.”

This colloquy took place one day last week over a telephone cable connecting blonde, comely Gloria Hollister on the deck of a barge with the sturdy little steel ball that was taking William Beebe and Otis Barton to a greater depth in the sea than man had ever reached before.

Early that morning the battered, blackened barge Ready had been towed by the tug Powerful from St. George, Bermuda, to a point eight miles off lovely Nonsuch Island. Bracketed on the inside wall of the bathysphere were oxygen tanks. Trays of soda lime (to absorb exhaled carbon dioxide) and calcium chloride (to absorb moisture) were stowed in. Dr. Beebe and Mr. Barton wedged themselves in, smiling and waving. They were confident their bathysphere would stand up under the great pressure a half-mile down (1,300 lb. per sq. in.) because a few days before it had been lowered empty to 3,000 ft. and came up intact.

The 400-lb. door was hoisted into place on its lugs and screwed down tight with spanners and mauls. The supporting boom swung over the side, cable squeaked, the sphere ducked under. Cable was paid out at 50 ft. per minute. Log of the dive : 500 ft.: School of silvery squid.900 ft.: Color of water turquoise black.

1,900 ft.: Water inky black.

2,000 ft.: All kinds of lights in the water.

2,200 ft.: 1932 record passed (TIME, Oct. 3, 1932).

2,500 ft.: Flesh-colored fish. Schools of rare lampanyctus, hatchet fish, thousands of tiny squid.

Dr. Beebe had intended to try for a half-mile dive, but at 2,510 ft. he had a hunch, he said later, that he had better not go down any farther. While he was yammering excitedly into the mouthpiece, Mr. Barton exposed 25 ft. of cinema film and took five stills on supersensitive plates. Soon the dripping ball was on the barge deck again and the divers popped out. Said Dr. Beebe: “I have never seen so much stuff in my life, and new stuff, too. It is the silliest thing in the world to attempt to describe it in a few words.”

The Barton-Beebe bathysphere is a single steel casting 1½-in. thick and 4 ft. 9 in. in diameter. It weighs 5,000 lb. There are three 8-in. windows of fused quartz. The sphere was designed and built by Otis Barton, Harvardman (1922 ), big game hunter, onetime Paris art student. He presented it to the New York Zoological Society. That body and the National Geographic Society sponsored the present expedition.