April 13, 2018 — One of Earth’s “hidden frontiers,” where the only light comes from flashes of bioluminescence and the creatures that call it home are largely unknown. It is … the ocean’s twilight zone.

That vast unexplored realm is the focus of a multi-year project announced Wednesday by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, which has been awarded $35 million to plumb the depths in hopes of learning more about the organisms that live there and how the region affects the planet’s climate.

The ocean’s twilight zone extends around the world from about 200 to 1,000 meters below the ocean’s surface, WHOI said, and is also known as the “mid-water region” of the ocean.

With the $35 million gift from the Audacious Project, WHOI plans to use “next-generation robotic vehicles and sensors” to study what lives in the twilight zone, how the organisms interact with each other and the surface waters, how to design tools to further explore the depths and how the zone controls the rate at which the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times