In the middle of the 19th century the prevailing scientific view of the abyssal ocean held that it was a vast body of water with a uniform temperature of 4°C. With no variation of temperature there could be no convection currents, hence no circulation of dissolved oxygen and suspended food particles. The abyss was stagnant, a body of water under massive pressure, barely warmer than freezing and utterly without light. Thus, reasoned the scientists (influenced, no doubt, by human physiology and the Book of Genesis), it could not conceivably support life. The Manx naturalist Edward Forbes coined the word 'azoic' to describe this self-evidently lifeless zone. By the 1870s he and other oceanographers were eating their words as improved sampling technology retrieved abundant evidence that, in cheerful defiance of human preconceptions, even the deepest abyss was teeming with life.

LRB 6 March 2003 | PDF Download