OceTHE OFFICIALa MAGAZINEn ogOF THE OCEANOGRAPHYra SOCIETYphy CITATION Widder, E. 2016. The fine art of exploration. Oceanography 29(4):170–177, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016.86. DOI https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016.86 COPYRIGHT This article has been published in Oceanography, Volume 29, Number 4, a quarterly journal of The Oceanography Society. Copyright 2016 by The Oceanography Society. All rights reserved. USAGE Permission is granted to copy this article for use in teaching and research. Republication, systematic reproduction, or collective redistribution of any portion of this article by photocopy machine, reposting, or other means is permitted only with the approval of The Oceanography Society. Send all correspondence to: [email protected] or The Oceanography Society, PO Box 1931, Rockville, MD 20849-1931, USA. DOWNLOADED FROM HTTP://TOS.ORG/OCEANOGRAPHY REGULAR ISSUE FEATURE The Fine Art of Exploration By Edith Widder 170 Oceanography | Vol.29, No.4 ABSTRACT. Else Bostelmann was the artist who created the iconic imagery depicting mentioned that some of those paint- William Beebe’s record-breaking bathysphere dives off Bermuda in the 1930s. Although ings had been published in National she has been largely relegated to history’s footnotes, the discovery of a cache of her Geographic. That got my attention. I works and papers provides some new insights into her life and the part she played in asked if there was any chance it was Else the history of deep-sea exploration. Bostelmann. Janeen didn’t know, but said she would find out and get back to A few years ago, a physical oceanogra- ignominious handling of the bathysphere me. When she did, I was delighted to pher friend of mine gave a public lec- that transported William Beebe and Otis discover it was in fact Bostelmann, and ture on the tides. He did a masterful job Barton into the ocean off Bermuda in Janeen set up an appointment for me to of explaining the phenomenon, but the 1930 to make their record-breaking dives visit her friend’s apartment in Miami. part of his lecture that I remember best and the first direct observations of life in I first became familiar with Bostelmann was when he described his pilgrimage to the deep sea (Figure 1). Instead of being from her illustrations in William Beebe’s the Bay of Fundy in Canada, the place duly memorialized as a chariot of the classic Half-Mile Down (1934), the book on Earth credited with the most extreme gods, the bathysphere has had a bumpy in which he described his record breaking tides. He was looking forward to this trip history; it includes having been used to dives. Most deep-sea scientists recognize and carefully timed it so he would arrive test the impacts of underwater explo- those paintings. Along with Beebe’s evoc- early enough to find a parking space with sions during World War II and being ative prose, they helped open a portal to plenty of time to spare before the peak misplaced from 1994 until 2005, when it an alien world. Beebe was someone who tide. What stuck with me was his utter turned up hidden away under the Coney could never be accused of not being able bafflement at the fact that the parking lot Island rollercoaster. Thankfully, it’s now to contextualize the moment for his audi- was empty, and he was the only person on display at the New York Aquarium, ence, as is clearly evident in his descrip- there to witness what he viewed as one of but compare this to NASA’s various tion of his first deep dive with Barton in the natural wonders of the world. museums, including the Johnson Space the bathysphere and the moment they I had a similar sense of bafflement Center, the Goddard Visitor Center, and reached the heretofore unimaginable when I first visited the bathyscaphe Trieste the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space depth of 700 feet: at the US Navy’s National Museum in Museum, that conserve and memorial- Washington, DC. For those who haven’t ize every possible artifact related to space Ever since the beginnings of human history, made this pilgrimage, I should warn you, exploration—including astronauts’ socks, when first the Phoenicians dared to sail the it’s not easy to find. When I finally did toothbrushes, and disposable underwear! open sea, thousands upon thousands of find it, I was amazed to discover I was We know we need to get better at con- human beings had reached the depth at the only person in the museum. I had to textualizing our science. A step in the which we were now suspended, and had wait half an hour before somebody finally right direction would be to do a better passed on to lower levels. But all of these came by whom I could ask to take my job of preserving our historical artifacts were dead, drowned victims of war, tem- picture standing next to this famous relic and sharing them with the public in a pest, or other Acts of God. We were the first of deep-sea exploration: the vehicle that way that will excite the kind of thrill that living men to look out at the strange illu- in 1960 carried Don Walsh and Jacques NASA is so good at eliciting. With that mination: And it was stranger than any Piccard to the deepest point in the ocean. in mind, I share here an unexpected find imagination could have conceived. We in oceanography often bemoan the of some precious artifacts of deep-sea pitiful budget allotted for ocean explo- exploration history. The utter strangeness of all he saw ration compared to space exploration, Everyone wants to find a hidden trea- posed a challenge for Beebe, because but we don’t have to look very far to see sure. Anyone who has will tell you the even such a master of the spoken and that part of the problem is that the NASA sweetest part of finding treasure is the written word found it nearly impossi- public relations machine dwarfs our own process of discovery. Mine began over ble to describe the scenes he witnessed stumbling efforts. A case in point is the breakfast with a friend of mine, an art- out the bathysphere’s port to an audience ist named Janeen Mason. Janeen had that knew nothing of deep-sea life. That’s just illustrated a children’s book about where Bostelmann came in. Bostelmann FACING PAGE. Study in gouache of pelagic snails on a black background (28.6 × 36.2 cm) by fish, which had prompted a fellow art- drew what Beebe saw, and her artwork Else Bostelmann. These detailed drawings are ist friend of hers to mention a bunch of appeared not only in Half-Mile Down based on careful examination of trawled spec- old paintings that she had in her closet but also in a series of widely read articles imens, including a dagger-shaped Creseis, a coiled Limacina, an eggplant-shaped Cuvierina that included a lot of fish paintings by that Beebe wrote for National Geographic columnella, and shield-shaped cavolinids. her husband’s great grandmother. She in the 1930s. Oceanography | December 2016 171 He described their creative process in I found behind that door was a lot more new species. It was the sixteenth of the Half-Mile Down: than the few sketch books and discarded whole genus to be taken by man, and the drawings that I was expecting. This was first ever to be seen alive.” Soon after I returned to the surface I the motherlode! It included examples of Access to trawled specimens like these reviewed my telephoned notes*, espe- Bostelmann’s renditions of deep-sea fauna was a critical component of Bostelmann’s cially of the several new fish of which I had on black backgrounds, which are known ability to recreate the deep-sea scenes that been given such excellent sights. I added as the “black paintings” (see figures). I had Beebe described. Unlike the “brain fish,” all the details that came to mind. Then, been thrilled to see some of these paint- which Beebe had to create from memory with my artist Mrs. Bostelmann, I went ings several years before when they were because it resembled nothing he had seen into an artistic huddle, made scrawling on temporary display at the Monterey Bay before, most of Bostelmann’s paintings attempts myself, and then carefully cor- Aquarium as part of a deep-sea exhibit. included exquisite detail right down to rected her trained drawing. Little by lit- Those were some of the originals pub- the correct number of fin rays and photo- tle my brain fish materialized, its propor- lished in Half Mile Down, but the ones phores and other features too fine to have tions, size, color, lights, fins interdigitated that I was holding in my hands had never been based on Beebe’s verbal descriptions. with those of my memory, and we have appeared in any publication, so far as I This was possible because trawling played a splendid finished painting, which rep- knew. One, labeled “Fairy Fish” on the a major role in “the expedition,” as it was resents the vision in front of my window back, was a stunning, detailed study of called, which was a privately funded, at 11:52 in the morning of August elev- two Dolichopteryx (Opisthoproctidae), intensive study of ocean life in an eight- enth [1934], 1900 feet below the surface of remarkable deep-sea fish with tubular square-mile area of the ocean off Bermuda the Atlantic Ocean.