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The idea of a descent into anything unnerves us. We descend into madness, into grief, into chaos. We fall into disrepute, fall from grace, and even worse, fall into oblivion.
The biologist Edward O. Wilson summed it up in a sentence: “Even the deadliest and most repugnant creatures bring an endowment of magic to the human mind.”
Any marine scientist examining it now would recognize it as a hexactinellid, or glass sponge—an intriguing, primitive animal that can live for more than ten thousand years.
William Beebe wanted to go first. He was a guy who loved birds, jungles, cocktails, expeditions, costume parties, museums, marine life, writing, science, and women—and not necessarily in that order.