Name: 【TED】Heidi M. Sosik: The discoveries awaiting us in the ocean's twilight zone (The discoveries awaiting us in the ocean's twilight zone | Heidi M. Sosik)
Uploaded: 2018-07-02T17:21:22.000Z
Duration: 10 min 2 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I bet all of you are familiar with this view of the ocean,

most of the ocean looks nothing like this.

At 200 to 1,000 meters below the surface,

Tiny particles swirl down through the darkness

give us a clue that these waters teem with life:

Everything that lives here has amazing adaptations

for the challenges of such an extreme environment.

These animals help support top predators such as whales, tuna,

There could be 10 times more fish biomass here

In fact, maybe more than all the rest of the ocean combined.

There are countless undiscovered species in deep waters,

and life in the twilight zone is intertwined with earth's climate.

Yet the twilight zone is virtually unexplored.

There are so many things we still don't know about it.

I was drawn to oceanography by just this kind of challenge.

To me it represents the perfect intersection

the spark for so many breakthrough discoveries about life on our planet.

I went on an expedition across the Atlantic

with a team of scientists using a high-powered laser

The wild thing that happened on that trip

is that we discovered what everyone who looked before had completely missed:

photosynthetic cells smaller than anyone thought possible.

We now know those tiny cells are the most abundant

This amazing discovery happened because we used new technology

I am convinced that the discoveries awaiting us in the twilight zone

We know so little about the twilight zone because it's difficult to study.

spanning from the Arctic to the Southern Ocean

It changes quickly as the water and animals move.

And it's deep and dark and cold, and the pressures there are enormous.

You may be imagining huge monsters lurking in the deep sea,

And this fierce-looking fish is called a bristlemouth.

Believe it or not, these are the most abundant vertebrates on earth

and many are so small that a dozen could fit in this one tube.

because small size does not stop them from being powerful through sheer number.

Deep, penetrating sonar shows us that the animals form dense layers.

You can see what I mean by the red and yellow colors

But if we look, it can't be, because the layer is deep during the day,

This is actually the largest animal migration on earth.

sweeping through the world's oceans in a massive living wave

as twilight zone inhabitants travel hundreds of meters

and return to the relative safety of deeper, darker waters during the day.

These animals and their movements help connect the surface and deep ocean

they bring carbon in their food into the deep waters,

where some of that carbon can stay behind

and remain isolated from the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years.

In this way, the migration may help keep carbon dioxide

and limit the effects of global warming on our climate.

We don't know which species are migrating,

or how much carbon they are able to transport.

So I'm a scientist who studies life in the ocean.

For me, curiosity about these things is a powerful driver,

We need to answer these questions and answer them quickly,

because the twilight zone is under threat.

hundreds of thousands of tons of small, shrimp-like animals called krill.

to support increasing demands for aquaculture

and for nutraceuticals such as krill oil.

Industry is on the brink of deepening fisheries such as these

in what could start a kind of twilight zone gold rush

operating outside the reach of national fishing regulations.

【TED】Heidi M. Sosik: The discoveries awaiting us in the ocean's twilight zone (The discoveries awaiting us in the ocean's twilight zone | Heidi M. Sosik)

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【TED】Heidi M. Sosik: The discoveries awaiting us in the ocean's twilight zone (The discoveries awaiting us in the ocean's twilight zone | Heidi M. Sosik)

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enormous

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fascinating