Into the Midnight Zone: Secrets of the Ocean Void

Directed by Leo Richards

In the deep ocean, life is divided between very different worlds. In the midwater, pelagic wanderers tread migratory routes that span entire oceans, and planktonic drifters and their predators take part in bioluminescent light shows. It is separated into zones based on depth, including the sunlight zone (epipelagic), twilight zone (mesopelagic), midnight zone (bathypelagic), abyssal and hadal zones. And below, lies the deep sea floor. A kingdom of mud and ooze, where sessile creatures cling to any solid outcrop and corals craft kingdoms on the seamount crusts. The worlds of the deep sea could not be more different, and yet their stories are fundamentally intertwined. In this episode, we delve into the Midnight Zone, a pitch-black zone of the deep sea where life has found peculiar ways to survive the immense pressure, from anglerfish to vampire squid to giant sharks.