The ''Valdivia'' Expedition, or ''Deutsche Tiefsee-Expedition'' (German Deep Sea Expedition), was a scientific expedition organised and funded by the
German Empire
The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
under
Kaiser Wilhelm II and was named after the ship which was bought and outfitted for the expedition, the
SS ''Valdivia''. It was led by the marine biologist
Carl Chun
Carl Chun (1 October 1852 – 11 April 1914) was a German marine biologist.
Chun was born in Höchst, today a part of Frankfurt, and studied zoology at the University of Leipzig, where from 1878 to 1883 he was privat-docent of zoology and an ...
and the expedition ran from 1898-1899 with the purpose of exploring the depths of the oceans below 500 fathoms, which had not been explored by the earlier
Challenger Expedition
The ''Challenger'' expedition of 1872–1876 was a scientific program that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the naval vessel that undertook the trip, .
The expedition, initiated by Wi ...
.
The Challenger Expedition was the expedition that established modern Oceanography, prompting many other expeditions, nationally or privately funded, which would dredge the deep-sea in search of new and exotic species. This late 19th Century fascination with organisms found at great depths was unsurprising, because in the mid-19th century most scientists followed
Abyssus theory The Azoic hypothesis (sometimes referred to as the Abyssus theory) is a superseded scientific theory proposed by Edward Forbes in 1843, stating that the abundance and variety of marine life decreased with increasing depth and, by extrapolation of h ...
which stated that it was not possible for life to exist below 300 fathoms depth.
Carl Chun
Carl Chun (1 October 1852 – 11 April 1914) was a German marine biologist.
Chun was born in Höchst, today a part of Frankfurt, and studied zoology at the University of Leipzig, where from 1878 to 1883 he was privat-docent of zoology and an ...
, a famed
teuthologist
Teuthology (from Greek , "cuttlefish, squid", and , ''-logia'') is the study of cephalopods such as octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. , held a deep conviction that there must be life, in abundance, which existed in the unknown abyssal regions of the oceans, a belief he shared with an increasingly large number of marine scientists. This conviction along with his desire to further explore the areas of the oceans which were not covered by the Challenger Expedition that led him to propose that the German Empire organise its own expedition which was to be nationally funded with the approval of the Kaiser.
Conception and preparation
Chun proposed to the ''
Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte'' (Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians), which was the German equivalent of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
, that a German deep sea expedition be funded and equipped to explore the deep oceans. His proposal was well received and a resolution to approve the plan and recommend it to the German government was unanimously adopted on 24 September 1897. It was originally conceived as purely zoological expedition but
Friedrich Ratzel
Friedrich Ratzel (August 30, 1844 – August 9, 1904) was a German geographer and ethnographer, notable for first using the term ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") in the sense that the National Socialists later would.
Life
Ratzel's father was th ...
suggested that chemical and physical observations be included in the expedition's remit and this was accepted. The German government approved the proposal and granted the expedition 300,000 marks in initial funding with promises of further grants to cover the expenses of the expedition and the publication costs of its findings.
The ship, the ''
SS Valdivia'', was chartered from the ''
Hamburg-Amerikanischen Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft'' (HAPAG), which fitted the ship out with equipment such as dredging gear, specimen jars, deep sea traps and oceanographic equipment, also outfitting the laboratories, while also providing the crew and provisions, all for a sum equivalent to £17,000, a sum which covered the company's expenses but did not allow for any profit.
Chun was the overall leader of the expedition.
[ A captain of whaling ships, Adalbert Krech, was appointed the ship's captain while the navigator was Walter Sachse who was an employee of HAPAG's. The scientific staff was made up of the botanist Professor W. Schimper of ]Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
, the zoologists Carl Apstein
Carl Heinrich Apstein (19 September 1862, Stettin – 14 November 1950, Berlin) was a German zoologist (over a wide variety of animal life) and botanist (with a focus on phytoplankton and algae).
In 1889 he earned his doctorate from the Univer ...
, Ernst Vanhöffen and Fritz Braem, the oceanographer Gerhardt Schott, the chemist Paul Schmidt and Dr M. Bathman who was a bacteriologist and the ship's doctor, who died on the voyage. August Brauer
August Bernhard Brauer (3 April 186310 September 1917) was a German zoologist.
Brauer was born in Oldenburg. He studied natural sciences at the Universities of Bonn, Berlin and Freiburg, obtaining his doctorate in 1895 with a thesis on the c ...
and Otto zur Strassen who were zoologists by profession and Fritz Winter who was an artist and photographer, but these had no official status recorded.[
]
The Voyage
The ''Valdivia'' set sail from Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...
on 1 August 1898[ and made its first call into the harbour of ]Granton, Edinburgh
Granton is a district in the north of Edinburgh, Scotland. Granton forms part of Edinburgh's waterfront along the Firth of Forth and is, historically, an industrial area having a large harbour. Granton is part of Edinburgh's large scale waterf ...
, where the scientists visited the offices of ''The Challenger'' Expedition Commission and were entertained by Sir John Murray.[ The expedition then sailed north, entering the Atlantic between the ]Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands ( ), or simply the Faroes ( fo, Føroyar ; da, Færøerne ), are a North Atlantic island group and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
They are located north-northwest of Scotland, and about halfway bet ...
and the Shetland Islands
Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom.
The islands lie about to the n ...
and then turning south towards the Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (; es, :es:Canarias, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to ...
and the west coast of Africa, reaching Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
on 26 August.[ They then explored a major part of the Indian Ocean and the Antarctic Ocean, covering a total of 32,000 nautical miles.]
The ''Valdivia'' was among the Antarctic ice for almost four weeks in November and December 1898 in the sea between Bouvet Island
Bouvet Island ( ; or ''Bouvetøyen'') is an island claimed by Norway, and declared an uninhabited protected nature reserve. It is a subantarctic volcanic island, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic R ...
, which was rediscovered by the expedition, and Enderby Land
Enderby Land is a projecting landmass of Antarctica. Its shore extends from Shinnan Glacier at about to William Scoresby Bay at , approximately of the earth's longitude. It was first documented in western and eastern literature in February 18 ...
. During this time the crew observed around 180 icebergs, many of which they sketched and photographed; however, as the ''Valdivia'' was an ordinary steel-hulled vessel, the ship had to remain clear of the pack ice
Drift ice, also called brash ice, is sea ice that is not attached to the shoreline or any other fixed object (shoals, grounded icebergs, etc.).Leppäranta, M. 2011. The Drift of Sea Ice. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Unlike fast ice, which is "faste ...
. As well as the biological, geological and geographic findings the expedition was also able to make significant meteorological observations.[
The ''Valdivia'' returned to Hamburg on 30 April 1899.][
]
Publication of results
The main aims of the expedition were to collect as many biological specimens as they could while focussing on how organisms adapted to the extreme conditions of the environment of the deep oceans. One result of this was that a number of anatomical studies of light organs were carried out. One of the best known publications is ''Volume 15: Die Tiefsee-Fische'' by Brauer which has an editorial review by Chun consisting of a systematic and anatomical study of the deep sea fish specimens they collected on their voyage aboard the ''Valvidia'' which were illustrated by Friedrich Wilhelm Winter. Winter's illustrations make it clear that these deep sea fish are heavily reliant on senses other than their vision. Many are bioluminescent
Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by living organisms. It is a form of chemiluminescence. Bioluminescence occurs widely in marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some fungi, microorganisms including some b ...
and in numbers these animals have the effect of making the deep, dark sea look like a night sky filled with stars.[
The expeditions findings took 4 decades to be published, and they were published in 24 volumes as ''Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer "Valdivia" 1898–1899'' (Scientific results of the German deep-sea expedition on the steamer "Valdivia" 1898–1899). Another much admired volume is Chun's own ''Die Cephalopoden'' in which Chun describes the ]vampire squid
The vampire squid (''Vampyroteuthis infernalis'', lit. 'vampire squid from hell') is a small cephalopod found throughout temperate and tropical oceans in #Habitat and adaptations, extreme deep sea conditions. The vampire squid uses its Biolumines ...
''Vampyroteuthis infernalis'' the scientific name meaning "the vampire squid from hell".[ The type specimen was collected on the expedition.]
Gallery
Here is a sample of some of the plates from ''Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer "Valdivia" 1898–1899'':
File:Die Cephalopoden (6285920147).jpg, '' Mastigoteuthis cordiformis''
File:Vampyroteuthis illustration.jpg, ''Vampyroteuthis infernalis
The vampire squid (''Vampyroteuthis infernalis'', lit. 'vampire squid from hell') is a small cephalopod found throughout temperate and tropical oceans in extreme deep sea conditions. The vampire squid uses its bioluminescent organs and its uniqu ...
''
File:Opisthoproctus soleatus.png, ''Opisthoproctus soleatus
''Opisthoproctus soleatus'' is a species of fish in the family Opisthoproctidae. It was first described in 1888 by Léon Vaillant. The species lives in most tropical seas, but is more common in the eastern Atlantic, from western Ireland to Maur ...
''
File:Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer "Valdivia" 1898-1899 (Tafel 3) (7413854158).jpg, Various Stomiidae
Stomiidae is a family of deep-sea ray-finned fish, including the barbeled dragonfishes. They are quite small, usually around 15 cm, up to 26 cm. These fish are apex predators and have enormous jaws filled with fang-like teeth. They are ...
File:Weltmeer.jpg, The front cover of Chun's account of the expedition
References
See also
European and American voyages of scientific exploration
The era of European and American voyages of scientific exploration followed the Age of Discovery and were inspired by a new confidence in science and reason that arose in the Age of Enlightenment. Maritime expeditions in the Age of Discovery were ...
{{Authority control
Exploration
Oceanographic expeditions
1898 in science
1899 in science