Deep sea art: Drawings depict what Brooklyn explorer saw below

Pioneering naturalist William Beebe plunged more than 3,000 feet into in the ocean, spotting creatures so bizarre skeptics thought he was making up. The New York Aquarium will unveil an art exhibit of the stunning sea creatures on the 80th anniversary of the historic dive.

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These haunting scenes will reemerge from the deep.

Images of never-before-seen mysterious sea creatures are set to resurface 80 years after a pioneering Brooklyn ecologist made a record-setting dive into the ocean’s murky depths.

The artworks, drawn from William Beebe’s firsthand accounts of previously unseen sea life, will be part of an exhibit at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium in Coney Island.

“He came back with these drawings, and people said, ‘This is nonsense,” said Aquarium director Jon Forrest Dohlin. “There was a lot of, ‘You must have been mistaken,’ or, ‘You must have made that up,’ because what he saw was so strange, so weird.”

Man had only descended about 350 feet beneath the ocean’s surface before Beebe and his partner Otis Barton made their historic dive off the coast of Nonsuch Island in Bermuda on Aug. 15, 1934.

The two men climbed into a newly invented metal bubble called the Bathysphere and plunged more than 3,000 feet into the watery darkness.

They returned with tales of sharp-toothed fish with translucent bellies, boneless monsters and big-mouthed eels.

Beebe relayed descriptions and careful notes to nature artist Else Bostelmann, who recreated the shocking scenes.

The Aquarium will unveil 15 of the pieces in its new “Drawn from the Depths” exhibition Friday, on the 80th anniversary of Beebe and Barton’s unprecedented expedition.

Some of the images have been hidden away in archives for 70 years, Dohlin said.

“Above all else, they’re beautiful pieces of art,” he said.

The anniversary celebration, which begins at 6:30 p.m., will include food, drinks and music.

The exhibition will be on display at least through Labor Day and possibly the rest of the year, Dohlin said.

Beebe’s expeditions in the Bathysphere paved the way for modern deep-sea diving.

The former bird expert for what is now the Bronx Zoo continued his explorations after the dive, later establishing a field research station in British Guiana for the New York Zoological Park.

The Bathysphere was eventually retired. The 4-foot-wide ball is now on permanent display at the New York Aquarium.