I'm bringing you in on something special. Something the science community has always known but hasn’t always highlighted: science has always been weird!

In science, weird is the spark of creativity, the outside-the-box thinking that leads to “Eureka!”.

But in our society, kids as young as five are already learning to think of weird as bad, and by age nine they’ve learned to conform and lock their wonderful, creative weirdness away.

So weird needs protecting. That’s true for kids. It’s true for adults. And it’s true for the bizarre and beautiful world of the ocean twilight zone—the weirdest place on Earth!

Imagine if the weird and wonderful creatures of the twilight zone could teach us to understand, and celebrate the weird within each of us.

Does that sound weird? We're counting on it!

When you look at the creatures of the twilight zone, you realize that the things that make them weird are also their superpowers the extraordinary adaptations they use to make their way in the world. And that’s exactly what we're celebrating.

These weirdly wonderful creatures are more than curiosities, though, they are critical to the health of our planet and our key to understanding the vast twilight zone.

Our mission is to expand knowledge of the twilight zone to discover more complex creatures that live there, understand their life cycles and behaviors, how they fit into the global food web, and how they regulate Earth’s climate. We need to do this before our actions, whether fishing or through climate change, reshape their home forever. Now, all we need for you to do is to get weird with us!

With gratitude,

Heidi Sosik
Project lead, Ocean Twilight Zone project