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Life in the sea provides immense benefits to humans, from the food we eat to the air we breathe to the climate we live in. And because of human activities, the once seemingly vast and inexhaustible seas are changing—increasingly threatened by global-scale impacts, such as warming and acidification, as well as those that are more localized, like overfishing and pollution. Meanwhile, many of the species that live in the sea remain unknown. Even for the known species, our understanding of their roles in the ecosystem is still limited. Now more than ever, increased observation of life in the sea is required to find and describe unknown species, observe shifts in species abundance and distribution, identify adaptability and resilience to climate change, and understand vital roles that species play in our marine systems. New and emerging technologies promise to enable observation over the required temporal and spatial scales. And emerging data systems will allow development of critical ecological understanding, while informing responsible use of marine natural resources. This will lead to continued, sustainable ecosystem services and the benefits we derive from them, benefits that are only possible through conserving biodiversity and managing human actions wisely.

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More than half of Earth is covered by ocean, yet little is known about the deep sea (> 200 meters), particularly the water column. From 200 to 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is the mesopelagic zone, where a variety of organisms thrive. Within this zone, there is a portion of the water column where mesopelagic organisms are highly abundant due to light differences and predator avoidance, causing the region to be acoustically dense; this is known as the deep scattering layer (DSL). We hypothesized