Manganese nodules resembling dark gray amoebas as big as 4 inches wide were found there in 1875 by the crew of the British Naval ship-turned-sailing-laboratory HMS Challenger, the first oceanographic expedition of its kind, which dredged up samples of creatures from the ocean floor from around the world. But the rush is now on to a site 2.5 miles deep into the Pacific Ocean seafloor, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, which lies between Hawaii and Mexico. Some of the Twilight Zone’s riches may show up in parts of the Indian, South Atlantic, and Pacific oceans. Just as cutting-edge research technology and submersibles are beginning to allow scientists to explore the sea beyond the reach of light, it’s the potential of these untapped treasures that is putting the Twilight Zone at risk of becoming a modern-day Wild West-the site of the next gold rush. It also plays a major role in global biogeochemical cycles and the sequestration of carbon dioxide, and its floor is bedazzled by polymetallic encrusted rocks that have been forming over millions of years in some of the slowest geological processes that we know of. The Twilight Zone contains the largest and the least exploited fish stocks on the planet, and is the site of the largest migration on Earth. Photos courtesy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It’s an urgent mission.ĬREATURES OF THE DEEP: The barbeled dragonfish, helmet jellyfish, and strawberry squid all make their homes in the ocean’s Twilight Zone. Scientists, including those under the umbrella of the United Nations Ocean Decade Program, have only recently begun to uncover the secrets of its topography, ecology, and biogeochemical content, not to mention the organisms that live there. Fables documented by the 18th-century Norwegian missionary Hans Poulsen Egede insisted that if fishermen were ever so unlucky to catch a kraken or be caught by its tentacles, they’d be taken to the Twilight Zone, the ocean underworld that holds the hardest-to-uncover secrets and treasures, never to return.Ĭenturies on, the Twilight Zone remains as amorphous as it is sprawling and mysterious. And then there’s the 46-feet long, 1,000-pound colossal squid that led Norwegian sailors to dream up the man-killing kraken that has inspired art, literature, and mythology. There’s the strawberry squid, a bright pink wonder with mismatched eyes the small eye pointed down to look for beams of bioluminescence in the dark, the big eye facing above to identify the shadows of other animals closer to the surface. There’s the helmet jellyfish, which has no brain and no eyes but a sensory bulb that can tell it when it’s a good time to retreat down into the darkness. It’s home to barbeled dragonfish, a gnarly looking creature whose teeth are embedded with nanocrystals. In other words, it starts where there is a trace of light and extends to a depth where there is none. Most squid, I would learn, live in the ocean column known as the mesopelagic, the “Twilight Zone.” It starts roughly 600 feet below the surface and goes down into darker waters, about 3,300 feet deep. I wasn’t sure why the squid were that close to the surface. I came across a creature so unexpected, so alien-like the kind of thing I imagined you’d find only in the deep. One or two minutes must have passed like this as the three of us levitated, frozen in this gesture, my breath deepening, the cold water currents rippling between us. They didn’t reach for it-but they didn’t swim away, either. They reminded me of other monocular animals, of birds that turn sideways to get a good look at you. Two of them, swaying gently underneath the surface, about 8 inches long, with perfectly round, almost cartoonishly googly eyes on either side of their narrow heads. Once I came across a creature so unexpected, so alien-like the kind of thing I imagined you’d find only in the deep. Through my foggy goggles, I could spot colorful parrot fish and schools of yellow French grunt, especially if I swam closer to the reefs. Outfitted with my bright blue flippers and a snorkel, I listened to the whisper and rhythm of everything around me. This was the Caribbean, where I grew up, and where I first ventured past where the waves begin to form, to that place we call the deep end. That’s where you’ll find the best places to snorkel. You have to let it sweep you until you can float past it. When you go to the “deep end” of the ocean, I’d always been told, don’t fight the undertow or it’ll drag you down.
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