MARIA S. MERIAN MSM147

Driven by the need to ‘eat without being eaten’, many animals in the ocean make a daily vertical migration: as darkness falls, they rise from the depths to near-surface layers and descend again in daylight. But what happens below around 1,000 metres, where perpetual darkness reigns? Do the animals still migrate here, and is there perhaps even a ‘ladder’ of vertical migrations reaching ever deeper? And if so, what drives them? The MSM147 expedition, aboard the research vessel MARIA S. MERIAN, will be investigating these questions whilst at sea in the Atlantic between the Azores and Cape Verde from 10 October to 5 November 2026. The research team from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel is investigating whether there is a multi-stage ‘ladder of vertical migration’, through which the food webs in the deep sea are interconnected in previously unknown ways.