American naturalist William Beebe and engineer Otis Barton conducted a series of historic deep dives in their tethered bathysphere off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934. On June 11, 1930, they reached a depth of 1,300 feet, and in 1934, they set a world record of 3,028 feet, marking the first time humans observed deep-sea life in its native habitat.

Beebe's bathysphere dives, documented in his vivid prose, opened a new world to the human imagination, revealing the deep sea as a realm of alien beauty and strangeness. His descriptions of bioluminescent creatures and abyssal landscapes influenced a generation of poets and writers, from the surrealist imagery of the 1930s to the ecological poetry of the late 20th century, who saw in the deep a mirror for the unconscious and the unknown.