Multimedia Items
Sunlit Zone, Twilight Zone, and Midnight Zone locations in the water column
The ocean’s mesopelagic zone, also known as the ocean twilight zone, is located roughly 100 to 1000 meters below the surface. It begins just beneath the sunlit waters of the…
Read MoreA pop of red in the twilight zone
This bejeweled beauty is a strawberry squid (Histioteuthis reversa), sampled from the ocean twilight zone, a mysterious stratum of the ocean between the sunlit surface layer and extending down to about 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) deep.
Read MoreCatching ‘snow’ in the ‘twilight zone’
Clindor Cacho of WHOI (middle), and Brad Issler (left) and Stephen Bell (right) from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, recover a Neutrally Buoyant Sediment Trap (NBST) after a mission…
Read MoreWorking in the Twilight Zone
Particles sinking from sunlit surface waters through the ocean’s dimly lit twilight zone are often swept sideways by currents. Conventional moored or tethered traps designed to catch the particles for…
Read MoreOcean food web processes that drive carbon cycle
The figure above illustrates the ocean food web processes that drive the transformation and partitioning of carbon among various reservoirs. Dissolved inorganic carbon enters the ocean as CO2 which is…
Read MoreCarbon Pump
This bell-shaped cluster is made up of gelatinous organisms called salps (genus Cyclosalpa). This kind of salp lives in sunlit surface waters, but other species migrate to and from the…
Read MoreMaybe Not What You Think
The Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis) is infamous for its painful stinging tentacles that can extend up to 10 meters (33 feet) long down from the surface. They are used to…
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