00 — Sunlit zone · 0 m

Most of Earth is still a blank on the map.

More than 80% of the ocean is unmapped, unobserved and unexplored. This is a field guide to the part of our planet we keep forgetting. Scroll to go under.

01 — Twilight zone · 200 m

Every night, the largest migration on Earth begins.

Billions of animals rise from the twilight to feed in the dark and sink again at dawn, carrying carbon down with them as they go.

02 — Midnight zone · 1,000 m

Here, the light is made, not found.

Sunlight ends. Roughly three in four animals of the open deep sea produce their own light, to hunt, to hide and to find each other.

03 — Abyssal zone · 4,000 m

The quiet machine that keeps the planet livable.

The ocean has absorbed about a quarter of our CO₂ emissions and over 90% of the excess heat. Its deep currents decide the weather above.

04 — Hadal zone · 10,935 m

At the bottom, life still insists.

More than 1,000 atmospheres of pressure. Total dark. And still: amphipods, snailfish and microbes that rewrite what we think life needs.