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