Deploying the OTZ Observation Network

Mission Overview

This past summer, the OTZ team significantly expanded its groundbreaking Twilight Zone Observation Network, a collection of moorings that record constant data in the mesopelagic. In addition to acoustic sensors that are already aboard the moorings, bioacoustician Andone Lavery and her lab the team added three Wide Band Acoustic Transceivers (WBATs), which will track vertically-migrating organisms over roughly 250,000 square kilometers (155,300 square miles) of the twilight zone in the Atlantic ocean. The team also added extra sediment traps to capture marine snow, and installed low-light cameras to record images of twilight zone animals in their native habitat. A documentary crew from PBS series Future of Nature joined the cruise to film scientists' work aboard the ship.