By attaching such nets to steam-powered vessels, which could drag enormous lengths of cable, much greater depths could be reached. For decades, fishermen had been catching oysters and other bottom-dwelling organisms by having their boats drag dredging nets across the seafloor. Ĭhallenging the Deep Sea - As so often, it was a somewhat mundane technological development that granted access to the deep sea. Ein Nachschlagewerk des allgemeinen Wissen, Leipzig-Vienna, Bibliografisches Institut, 5th edition, 1897, part 12. In: Hermann Julius Meyer (ed.), Meyers Konversations-Lexicon. This is no accident – of all the odd and surprising things that were found in the dark depths of the oceans, light-producing animals left the most lasting impression.ħ.3 | ‘Meeresfauna – Tiefseefauna’. Though they’re not in the centre of the picture, the two luminescent dragonfishes in the otherwise rather dark image immediately catch our eye. In fact, it is a composite of animals from various geographical areas and depths that had been collected during some of the deep-sea expeditions of the previous decades (7.3). The image accompanying the rather lengthy article shows a reconstruction of what is taken to be a typical deep-sea fauna. The term ‘deep sea’ now warranted its own entry in encyclopaedias such as the 1897 edition of the popular German Meyer’s Konversations-Lexicon. īy the late nineteenth century, the deep sea had firmly seated itself in public consciousness, even though nobody had actually been there, except through imagination. In: Jules Verne, Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, Paris, Hetzel, 1872, p. Down there, the sea is shown to be populated by a rich variety of creatures, both familiar and strange, which understandably instil both fear and wonder in the hearts of the submarine’s crew (7.2).ħ.2 | Alphonse de Neuville, Crew of the Nautilus. The crew even leave the vessel and walk on the ocean floor. This did not go unnoticed by the general public: in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers ( Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), published in 1870, the famous French author Jules Verne (1828– 1905) imagined an advanced submarine descending to incredible (and in hindsight not entirely possible) depths. Soon enough people began explicitly looking for deep-sea fishes, bringing up nets from ever deeper regions of the oceans. Nevertheless, by the early nineteenth century these oddities had established an acute awareness among naturalists that only the topmost layer of the seas had been explored, and that deeper waters could house many more of these strange creatures. They included some that swam into shallow waters during the night, dying specimens that drifted to the surface, or sometimes those caught on longlines by fishermen who were trying to catch something else. ĭuring the eighteenth century, such encounters with deep-sea fishes were more or less accidental. In: Peder Ascanius, Icones rerum naturalium ou figures enluminées d’histoire naturelle du Nord, Copenhague, C. Its scientific name – Chimaera monstrosa – seems rather fitting.ħ.1 | ‘Chimaera monstrosa’. Its anatomy is unlike that of well-known fish species, and its eerie, ghostly appearance makes it look like something from another world. One such enigmatic animal was the so-called rabbit fish (7.1), which instantly strikes anyone who looks at it as something quite out of the ordinary. There were few surprises – the European seas had been well surveyed by that time – but occasionally less familiar creatures would be brought on board. The Copenhagen-based naturalist Peder Ascanius travelled the coast of Norway during the late 1760s, studying the animals living in the country’s many fjords and further out into the Norwegian sea. Aquatic Animals between Science and Imagination (1500–1900) can be purchased at the reception desk of the Leiden University Library. The researchers of this project published a catalogue providing a theoretical background, from which we share content this week. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880. The exhibition is a collaboration between the library and the LUCAS project A New History of Fishes. The Leiden Arts in Society Blog is dedicating a week to fishes and to the exhibition Fish & Fiction which is currently on view at the Leiden University Library.
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