My drawing “A roundtrip to Davy Jones’ locker” about William Beebe’s bathysphere won the first price in the drawing competition organised for the World Ocean’s Day 2021 by the International Seabed Authority.
I am beyond thrilled and grateful that my work has been considered and chosen for such an honour.
“The contraption depicted in this drawing is one of the first manned submersibles, the “Bathysphere”, invented by William Beebe and deployed between 1930 and 1934. This spherical submersible, allowed Beebe and his partner Otis Barton to dive to depths hitherto unknown to men, and observe mesopelagic and deep-sea creatures in their natural habitat for the first time. Even though technology has greatly improved since this first tentative invention, with state-of-the-art submersibles and remote-controlled underwater video systems now being used to explore the depths of the oceans and the seabed, the deep sea remains largely unexplored and is still more mysterious and less known than the surface of the moon. Shining a light into the depths of the ocean presents an ongoing challenge in the efforts to protect and conserve the life of all creatures of this earth, especially those that we have not met yet.”