11 June, 1930. On a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, a curious steel ball is lowered 3000ft into the sea. Crumpled up inside, gazing through the three-inch thick quartz windows, sits the famed zoologist William Beebe. With uncontrollable excitement, he watches as bizarre, never-before-seen creatures drift out of the inky blackness, illuminated by explosions of bioluminescence, bathing in the strange blue light of the deep sea - the bluest blue he has ever experienced.

Beebe's dives took place against the backdrop of a transforming and paradoxical America, home of ground-breaking scientists, outmoded adventurers and eugenicist billionaires. Yet under the ocean's crushing pressure, narratives of scientific discovery and exploration slowly disintegrate; the colour spectrum shatters into new dimensions; organisms thrive in defiance of conventional understanding. The Bathysphere Book blurs the line between research and poetry to travel deep into the mind of William Beebe and his colleagues - and from this, towards the very edges of scientific discovery.