This allows the fish to acclimate to the lower pressures found at the surface. The decompression chamber replicates the high pressure of the depth at which the fish were found and then slowly lowers the pressure over time. Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium first catch the fish on a line and then place them in a decompression chamber once they reach the surface. Courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium.Īcademy researchers consulted with scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium who have successfully collected rock fish from deep in the ocean and raised them in the aquarium. Joe Welsh, a scientist at Monterey Bay Aquarium, checks on fish in their decompression chamber. And since my job is to make sure that those fish come back healthy, I thought about different ways that we could make sure that they could handle that pressure change,” explains Wandell. “I had started to hear about the idea of the California Academy of Sciences going down and exploring deep under the ocean with divers, and possibly collecting fish down there. Matt Wandell, a biologist at the Steinhart Aquarium, was a key player in designing a device that allows fish to be brought up safely. Having trouble viewing the video? Download or stream it on PBS Learning Media.įiguring out a solution to this problem required a team effort. Scientists at the California Academy of Sciences have engineered a device that safely transports fish from the ocean's twilight zone to the surface. How, then, can scientists safely collect these fish and bring them to the surface? The researchers at the California Academy of Sciences engineered a way. The swim bladder can balloon up and crush other vital organs inside the fish. Many fish have a swim bladder, a gas-filled organ that helps them maintain buoyancy. Bringing fish to the surface quickly exposes them to lower pressures, which causes the volume of the gases inside their swim bladder to expand. Pressure is higher the deeper you go in the ocean, and fish living in the twilight zone are specially adapted to live at high pressures. They knew that if they tried to bring fish up from that depth, the fish could die. However, the researchers ran into a problem. They also wanted to display the fish in the aquarium for the public to see. Courtesy of California Academy of Sciences.Īs part of their research, Shepherd and Rocha wanted to collect live fish of newly discovered species in order to study their behavior. School of fish in ocean's twilight light zone. “You know, one of the great questions that we still have is what are the connections between the shallow reefs and these twilight zone reefs? And that’s really why we are studying it, and that’s really why we continue to go and look there,” explains Shepherd. The scientists are studying the twilight zone to learn about the biodiversity of this region and the greater role it plays in the health of the ocean ecosystem. So, these are all new records, either new records of depth extensions or range extensions or new species,” says Rocha, curator of ichthyology at the Academy. The other half we didn’t know that they went that deep. “Everywhere we go about half of the fish are not known. “More people have been to the surface of the moon than have been to these reefs,” says Shepherd, director of the Academy’s Steinhart Aquarium. Courtesy of California Academy of Sciences. Bart Shepherd and Luiz Rocha, of the California Academy of Sciences, are among a group of scientists lucky enough to be able to dive and explore these depths.ĭivers in the twilight zone in the Philippines. Diving to this region requires specialized training and gear, and it takes hours to safely return to the surface after each dive. Scientists have many unanswered questions about the twilight zone, in part because it is so hard to reach. Some parts of the twilight zone (or mesophotic zone, as it’s known in scientific circles) are vast ocean space, but others are home to incredible coral reefs. Courtesy of California Academy of Sciences.ĭeep beneath the ocean’s surface lies a mysterious region known as the “twilight zone.” At 50 to 150 meters (200 to 500 feet) deep, this part of the ocean receives very little light, mimicking twilight - the time of day just after sunset. Diver exploring the ocean's twilight zone.
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