Part 1 Chapter 2 Summary

The narrator introduces himself as Pierre Aronnax, an assistant professor of the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Aronnax is in New York City at the height of the controversy about the "sea monster." Nearly every theory of what it could be has been abandoned except for two: it is either a sea monster or a man-made vessel (submarine).

Aronnax has to rule out the idea of a man-made submarine. The thing would cost too much for a private party to make. If a nation had built it, other nations would know about it as part of their war intelligence-gathering. It would be impossible to hide a project of this immensity and scale with its potential as a war armament.

Aronnax decides it must be a "marine animal of enormous power." He writes an article for the New York Herald to...