Document of bibliographic reference 324962

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

The neglected contributions of William Beebe to the natural history of the deep-sea

Abstract

William Beebe (1877–1962) was a very popular 20th century naturalist and an early proponent of studying all organisms in a habitat. Beebe’s deep-sea work began with his Arcturus Oceanographic Expedition in 1925 with sampling closely modelled on the Michael Sars deep-sea expedition. Dissatisfied with ship-based sampling of stations for a few days at best, he established a field laboratory in Bermuda to do intensive deep-water sampling. From 1929 to 1934, plankton net tows were carried out at the same site, over several months each year, totalling over 1500 net tows in deep waters. Here, the sampling efforts and results are reviewed from both the Arcturus Expedition and the Bermuda station. Study of the deep-sea samples yielded 43 scientific articles, published from 1926 to 1952, on a large variety of taxa. Beebe is still a popular figure connected in the public view with deep-sea exploration from his famous Bathysphere dives at the Bermuda site. However, his name rarely, if ever, appears in academic reviews of deep-sea biology or deep-sea expeditions. This study is an attempt to draw attention to Beebe’s considerable scientific deep-sea work and provide some speculation as to why his contributions might be neglected.

WebOfScience code

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000582719500003

Bibliographic citation

Dolan, J.R. (2020). The neglected contributions of William Beebe to the natural history of the deep-sea. ICES J. Mar. Sci./J. Cons. int. Explor. Mer 77(5): 1617-1628. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsaa053

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true

Access rights

open access

Is accessible for free

true