The Greatest Animal Migration On Earth Happens Every Night In The Ocean! | Into The Deep

Join Aquarium and MBARI scientists on a “blackwater SCUBA dive” as they brave the night to witness the largest animal migration on Earth!
Every night, billions of animals migrate from the ocean’s twilight zone to the surface to feed under the cover of darkness, offering divers the incredible opportunity to meet face-to-”face” with deep-sea, open-ocean, and larval lifeforms.
This “diel” vertical migration happens twice a day-once to the surface, and then back to the depths. At human scale, this is the equivalent of running a 10K twice a day at twice the speed of an Olympic marathoner! This nightly migration to the surface allows deep-sea animals to feed on abundant plankton grown in the sunlit surface waters-and lets the predators of these migrators feast in turn.
You never know what you’ll see on a blackwater dive, and new discoveries are being made almost every day! Larval forms of reef fishes and invertebrates zip and dart about to snag a meal while trying not to become one themselves. Meanwhile, filter-feeding salps act like midwater Roombas, vacuuming up planktonic morsels and sinking their wastes into the deep-sea in a blizzard of marine snow. All the bustle attracts many a predatory hustle, from small sea angels hunting sea butterflies, to larger squid and fishes looking for a meal on the go.
These dives are part of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s research and development for the upcoming “Into The Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean” exhibition-soon-to-be North America’s largest collection of deep-sea animals. We hope to deep-sea you April 9, 2022!
Learn more about the Into the Deep exhibition: mbayaq.co/3Gd6GE0
More Into The Deep videos: • Into The Deep: Explori...
Learn more about MBARI’s research on vertical migration: annualreport.mbari.org/2019/s...
Follow @MBARIvideo for more!
____
Whale hello there! We hope you liked this video. Subscribe to our channel for more from the Monterey Bay and our mission to inspire conservation of the ocean:
kzbin.info_...
Check out out website at: www.montereybayaquarium.org/
We're on Twitter: / montereyaq
And Facebook: / montereybayaquarium
And Instagram! / montereybayaquarium
And Tumblr! www.tumblr.com/blog/montereyb...
And Twitch! / montereyaq
And TikTok! / montereyaq
And Discord! / discord
And subscribe to our emails here: montereybayaquarium.org/subsc...
The Greatest Animal Migration On Earth Happens Every Night In The Ocean! | Into The Deep

[@MontereyBayAquarium]

Thanks for watching everyone! How many of you would want to do a blackwater dive?

[@isaakrobotham8157]

I would. Scuba diving is something i have tried in the past and would love to do again

[@bahuelga]

I have already!! It’s literally the most incredible experience in the world!! ❤️🦑

[@victoriawilliams2786]

I would love to do a black water dive. Unfortunately I'll never be able to afford diving classes. Or a trip to Monterey. I'm stuck in Maine and I haven't been able to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium since 1991. I miss Monterey soooo very much.

[@SpeedyThingGoIn4]

I'm down. Heck, even a daytime scuba dive is a treat.

[@stephanyd.204]

Where would you recommend as maybe top 5-10 places? i’ve done open water & cave diving. black water seems soooo scary & fun also!

[@isaakrobotham8157]

This is actually some of the coolest stuff i have ever learned about the sea

[@rhondahuggins9542]

I would thrilled to go black water diving!! Theses biologists are so fortunate to make such fantastic discoveries. Makes me long for the ocean thar I have only experienced twice...heavy sigh.💙🐙

[@morariu246]

Such beautiful creatures. Thank you.

[@orbitdragon7866]

gorgeous! i just shared the video with my friends!

[@wiggletonthewise2141]

Very interesting :)

[@SpeedyThingGoIn4]

Looks pretty scary, and pretty cool! As it's a vertical migration, I assume I can't experience this by diving in shallow waters. Is this accurate?

[@MontereyBayAquarium]

You very well could! Depending on wind, waves and currents, sometimes vertical migrators are blown onshore for divers to see them. Every winter we tend to get a few days of a deep-water community being pushed onto Cannery Row when winds and calmer seas conspire.

[@SpeedyThingGoIn4]

@@MontereyBayAquarium Well then, plenty of surprises out there in life. And these ones might glow in the dark~ It almost seems a disappointment to model or predict events like this. More fun to go out and see what can be seen at that moment.

[@owltakizawa]

Adding the mauve stinger to my list of my favorite jellies 😍😍😍 so gorgeous

[@henrymccoy7171]

Informative. Beautiful. Just... incredible. Thank you!!

[@mtbalpinecounty]

This is so cool!..

[@brucefelter1335]

colonial organism! WOW! THANK YOU FOR MY MARINE BIO LESSON💯

[@evillyn7895]

Fascinating.

[@bettyswinford5886]

Wonderful

[@tarocise4279]

I wish I lived in california so I could go see the deep sea exhibit when it happens, it sounds so cool

[@westernaustralianinsectstu19]

I can recognise most of those (nice baby pyrosome colonies for example) but the what the heck is the weirdo at 3:07?

[@FalconOfStorms]

1:51 he really just yeeted her.

[@user-dd3he9go4l]

I am Russian and I don't want any wars, I just want to rejoice in life, love my wife and children and watch out beautiful nature This video is fine, and nature is beautiful, all of the world

[@osmanhossain676]

Dangerous

[@sharkoroblarto]

This is really cool but I am concerned about the ethics of displaying these creatures that are used to swimming a marathon every day in a confined tank with finite space. It could be the biggest tank in the world and it would still be nothing compared to the ocean. Every time an aquarium has attempted to house a great white shark it has died within weeks, and we have a fairly solid understanding of sharks compared to deep sea creatures. Wouldn't this just be a death sentence for them? Obviously the scientists are working very hard to try and address all the concerns I've listed, and nobody benefits from the death of the animals least of all them. Still, I can't help but feel uneasy. If my worries are 100% unfounded and deep sea fish actually love being in aquariums, please let me know. I would love to be wrong. I'm not a marine biologist and I'm certainly not nearly as qualified as these incredible scientists. I want to be proven wrong. Heck I want to see these cool guys up close in an aquarium! I'd love to know the science behind why it's okay.

[@MontereyBayAquarium]

Excellent questions and thanks for sharing your concerns! There are a few pieces of information you shared that aren't quite exact. You're correct that no one has successfully exhibited adult great white sharks. However, we're have successfully exhibited six young white sharks here in Monterey, all of whom were returned to the wild after stays of various lengths with us. The first female stayed with us almost 200 days and gained 100lbs before being released to the wild, while the others resumed their travels in Southern California and Baja successfully according to the satellite tags we outfitted them with. One of the sharks we housed died later as bycatch in a wild fishery, while another passed away for unknown reasons after its return to the ocean. We brought these young sharks to the Aquarium as a part of a metabolic and tracking study to help resource managers understand how much energy white sharks need to grow, and where they travel for those resources. These data helped inform policy makers and the fishing industry, and today the population of shite sharks is improving up and down the coast, while millions of people got to see a white shark face to face instead of what they see on the news. With that data acquired, we concluded our program to display white sharks to focus on wild studies. In the case of these vertical migrators, their travels are due to food. In an aquarium setting, where the food comes to them, the need to be constantly on the move is diminished, and with no predators to avoid, the animals tend to settle in. Most of the animals we will have at the quarium from this migration are very small and housed in exhibits with constantly circulating water, so they do get to "run on a treadmill" as needed. The needs of a sea angel or a balloon worm are complicated, but mostly in terms of water chemistry, temperature and light, less so the physical space that a large squid, shark or marine mammal would require. We're also going to be learning a whole lot-many of the animals we find in the deep sea have rarely been observed alive, and many don't have a scientific name. Our scientists will be publishing papers and sharing discoveries as we go. We care deeply about the well being of the organisms in our care, and we appreciate people like yourself who also want to ensure that these animals are treated with empathy and respect. Thanks again for the comment!

[@sharkoroblarto]

@@MontereyBayAquarium that's awesome, thank you for the reply! Keep up the amazing work