What Beebe Saw…
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- Ocean Planet: Writings and Images of the Sea
What Beebe Saw…
  
William Beebe was a naturalist. He identified many new life forms. On one dive, he observed a large fish at 1,500 feet that he had never seen before. Listen to the passage that Beebe wrote describing what this fish looked like. Remember, they didn’t have cameras that could take a snap shot in the depths of the ocean! By listening, use your imagination and creativity to, as accurately as you can, draw what William Beebe saw. A Dark and Luminous Blue, by William Beebe Read the paper silently to yourself. When you are finished, use the information in the paper to respond to the following on ePals in the FORUM section of our group: Explain why biological diversity (number of plant and animal species) decreases with increasing depths. In your opinion, why do you think there are many more species around coral reefs, and coastal habitats? Narrative of What BEBE saw It was at least two feet long, without lights or luminosity, and had a small eye, a large mouth, and a long, wide, filamentous pectoral fin. The strange fish was at least two feet in length, wholly without lights, or luminosity, with a small eye and good-sized mouth. Later, when it shifted a little backwards I saw a long, rather wide, but evidently filamentous pectoral fin. The two most unusual things were first, the color, which, in the light, was an unpleasant pale, olive drab, the hue of water-soaked flesh, an unhealthy buff. It was a color worthy of these black depths, like the sickly sprouts of plants in a cellar. Another strange thing was its almost tailless condition, the caudal fin being reduced to a tiny knob or button, while the vertical fins, taking its place, rose high above and stretched far beneath the body, these fins also being colorless. I missed its pelvic fins and its teeth, if it had any, while such things as nostrils and ray counts were, of course, out of the question. There is a small family of deep-sea fish known as Cetomimid�, and somewhere in or close to this the strange apparition belongs. Only three species are known, and only twenty-four individuals have so far been captured, sixteen of which have been in our own deep nets drawn through these very waters. I have called the fish we saw the Pallid Sailfin, and am naming it Bathyembryx istiophasma, which is a Grecian way of saying that it comes from deep in the abyss and swims with ghostly sails. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s6776.html  Ocean Planet: Writings and Images of the Sea
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