It's the least explored part of the ocean.

這是海底最少被探索的區域。

A lot of us are familiar with the idea that there's lots of things living in the upper ocean, but we have maybe forgotten about the deep ocean and don't realize how interesting it is and how important it is to our planet.

我們大部分都熟知海洋上層有非常多生物，但我們可能遺忘了深海、深海多有趣以及對地球的重要性。

The creatures here live in the dark at pressures that would kill us.

這些黑暗中的生物在足以殺死我們的水壓下生存。

And far from the ocean floor, they're constantly moving, making them harder to track.

牠們不停地在距離海床遙遠處移動，十分難以追蹤。

You go down in the deep water and that is just paradise for those animals.

潛入海底深處便是那些動物們的天堂。

There're so many different kinds down there that nobody has ever seen before.

海底有很多人們前所未見的物種。

Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are embarking on an unprecedented six year project to explore the twilight zone and what they're finding could be key to feeding and protecting life on Earth.

美國伍茲霍爾海洋研究所的科學家正開啟了史無前例的海洋黃昏區六年探測計畫，而他們所發現的可能會是哺育保護地球生命的關鍵。

I'm Kayle Hope, and this is Quartz.

我是 Kayle Hope，你在收看 Quartz。

Please subscribe to our channel.

請訂閱我們的 YouTube 頻道。

This is the second expedition for the ocean twilight zone project.

這是海洋黃昏區計畫的第二次遠征。

By 2025, they expect to make dozens of trips to study the deep sea all over the world.

在西元 2025 年前，他們預計要踏上許多次研究世界各地深海的旅程。

The twilight zone is home to more fish than any other part of the ocean.

中層帶擁有比起海洋任何其他區域還多的魚類。

Pretty exciting actually to be able to go down in a submarine and look out the window or the port.

其實能夠坐潛水艇深入海底，並從窗戶或左舷望出去是非常令人興奮的。

And you see some animal that you know probably nobody in the history of humanity has ever seen before.

而且會看到可能人類歷史上前所未見的動物。

And especially even better if you can catch it and bring it back and describe it and give it a name.

若是能夠捕捉帶回、描繪並命名該生物就更好了。

There are only 15 or 20 submersibles in the world that can go this deep.

世界上只有 15 到 20 個無人潛水探測器能夠潛入這麼深的海底。

The twilight zone is kind of this important piece of the puzzle that's connecting the surface ocean and the deep ocean in intricate ways.

中層帶就像是錯綜複雜地連結海洋表層及深海的重要拼圖。

Heidi Sosik is the lead scientist on the project, and the sub is just a small part of their research.

Heidi Sosik 是這個計劃的首席科學家，而潛水器只是研究的一小部分。

They're towing a system of nets behind the ship that can be open and closed with a click of a mouse at different depths.

他們在船的後方拖著能在不同深度以滑鼠點按控制開關的漁網系統。

They're also collecting DNA from the water to better understand what organisms live there that we can't see.

科學家們也從海水中蒐集 DNA 來深入了解海底存在著什麼我們看不見的有機體。

We can identify possibly new organisms that don't exist in any reference database yet.

我們可能會發現不存在於任何參考資料庫中的全新有機體。

And they want to understand more about where all these creatures are going and what they do.

然後他們想要更加了解這些生物的去處和生活模式。

We're 300 meters down in the twilight zone, looking to see what we can find.

我們在 300 公尺深的黃昏區，看看我們能夠找到什麼。

Most of the animals that live in the twilight zone are quite small, but they're able to make these incredible movements through the ocean.

大部分生活在中層帶的生物都很小，但他們能夠在海洋間做出難以置信的運動。

This is called the diel vertical migration.

這被稱作日夜垂直遷移。

It's the largest migration of animals on earth and it happens every day.

這是世界上最大規模的動物遷移，而且每天都在發生。

The animals in the twilight zone don't just stay there.

中層帶的動物不單單只待在那裡。

A lot of them move through the ocean hundreds of meters every day up into surface waters.

牠們大多數會每天穿越好幾百公尺的海洋來到表層水域。

When it's dark at night, they come up and they can be kind of stealthy and feed on plankton that had been growing in the sunlit surface ocean.

黑夜中，牠們會上來鬼鬼祟祟地以生長於陽光普照的表層海洋的浮游生物為食。

So there's this like sweeping wave of animals moving up and down through the ocean every day, all across the globe.

全球每天都有大批大批的動物在海洋中上下移動。

They're part of what's called the global carbon pump.

牠們是所謂全球吸碳幫浦的一部份。

Tiny plants and bacteria at the surface pull carbon dioxide out of the air using photosynthesis.

海面的微小植物和細菌利用光合作用來吸收空氣中的二氧化碳。

During the diel migration, deep sea animals come up to eat them.

在日夜垂直遷移中，深海動物就會浮出來把牠們吃掉。

Then they descend, pulling carbon down with them and adding to what's called marine snow.

然後牠們向下潛入，將碳一同帶下並形成所謂的海洋雪。

Each of those particles is carbon.

那些小分子都是碳。

And it's heading down to the sea floor.

正往海床落去。

And if it makes it all the way down there, it can be stored away for thousands of years.

如果小分子一路到達那裡，就可能深深被保存好幾千年。

Joel Llopiz is a fish and zooplankton ecologist.

Joel Llopiz 是研究魚類和浮游生物的生態學家。

He's also a co-chief scientist on this project.

他也是這個計劃的共同領導人。

He says understanding the carbon pump could be key to fighting climate change.

他表示了解吸碳幫浦很可能是對抗氣候變遷的關鍵。

And it's one more thing scientists are just starting to understand about the twilight zone.

這是另一個關於中層帶科學家才剛開始領會的事。

The truth about the twilight zone is that we don't know what we don't know about it.

中層帶的真相是，我們不知道我們到底不知道什麼。

There could be a whole lot of species down there that we have not discovered yet.

海底可能有非常多我們尚未發掘的全新物種。

And he says, scientists are in a race against time.

他也說，科學家們正在和時間賽跑。

The animals here could become a big food source for aquaculture.

這裡的動物可能成為水產養殖的重大食物來源。

The world's population is growing so fast, and humans are struggling to feed themselves.

世界人口正十分快速地成長，而人們拼死拼活地要餵飽自己。

The twilight zone is a rich source of protein that could not feed humans directly, but it's likely to be fishmeal for food that we do eat.

中層帶是個豐富的蛋白質來源，這些蛋白質雖然無法直接供人類食用卻很可能成為我們吃的食物的飼料。

The scientists from Woods Hole want to gather as much information about the twilight zone as they can before humans change it irreversibly.

伍茲霍爾海洋研究所的科學家想要在人類不可挽回地改變海洋中層帶前，盡可能蒐集關於此地的資訊。

I think the challenge for us as humans who care about the health of our planet is that we know so little about the life in the ocean twilight zone that we don't have the information that we need.

我認為對於我們這些在乎地球健康的人而言最大的難關是，我們對於海洋中層帶生物的了解少之又少，以至於我們沒有所需的資訊。

We don't even know how long many of the fish that live there live.

我們甚至不知道在那裡生活的魚類壽命多長。

We don't know how long it takes them to reproduce.

我們不知道他們需要花多少時間繁殖。

And without that kind of information, you're flying blind.

而沒有那些資訊，就好比在盲目飛行。