giant fangs, psychedelic crustaceans,
a never-before-seen black-skinned
fish—made the expedition come alive
in National Geographic.
Beebe was mocked for hiring
women, but he stuck by his team.
After the mission ended, Bostelmann
continued to illustrate for National
Geographic, and Anable led a scien-
tific expedition to what is now Guyana.
Griffin went on to manage field stations
in the Caribbean and took Beebe’s job
as director of the Department of Trop-
ical Research after his death in 1962.
In an interview in 1991, underwater
explorer Sylvia Earle was asked what
inspired her to get into oceanography.
She cited Beebe’s tales. “The aquar-
iums of the world, as wonderful and
diverse as they are ... do not have the
sort of creatures that Beebe described
from his exploration back in the 1930s,”
she said. “And that certainly I found
utterly inspiring.”TRAILBLAZERS 123