Uploaded September 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Down where the light starts to fade — between around 30 and 150 meters below the ocean surface — there are mysterious "mesophotic coral ecosystems," also known as "deep reefs."
These ecosystems are hard to dive down into, and therefore hard to study, so we still don’t know much about them. Like even what creatures live there.
To learn more, Luiz Rocha, a curator of ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences, dove down into the depths in Palau, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and French Polynesia between 2016 and 2018 and left behind scientific devices known as ARMS (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures).
Those structures spent almost a decade becoming encrusted with deep reef life, slowly turning into mini versions of the reefs themselves. Earlier this year, Rocha and colleagues from several institutions returned to Palau to retrieve the ARMS and unwrap them like scientific presents.
Vox's Byrd Pinkerton, host of the Unexplainable podcast, went along to watch that process. Read her article about it at the link in our bio.
📹: Byrd Pinkerton & Steve Lindfield
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Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: goo.gl/IZONyE
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Check out our articles: vox.com
Listen to our podcasts: vox.com/podcasts
Down where the light starts to fade — between around 30 and 150 meters below the ocean surface — there are mysterious "mesophotic coral ecosystems," also known as "deep reefs."
These ecosystems are hard to dive down into, and therefore hard to study, so we still don’t know much about them. Like even what creatures live there.
To learn more, Luiz Rocha, a curator of ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences, dove down into the depths in Palau, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and French Polynesia between 2016 and 2018 and left behind scientific devices known as ARMS (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures).
Those structures spent almost a decade becoming encrusted with deep reef life, slowly turning into mini versions of the reefs themselves. Earlier this year, Rocha and colleagues from several institutions returned to Palau to retrieve the ARMS and unwrap them like scientific presents.
Vox's Byrd Pinkerton, host of the Unexplainable podcast, went along to watch that process. Read her article about it at the link in our bio.
📹: Byrd Pinkerton & Steve Lindfield
Subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications (🔔) so you don't miss any videos: goo.gl/0bsAjO
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on TikTok: tiktok.com/@voxdotcom
Check out our articles: vox.com
Listen to our podcasts: vox.com/podcasts
