Why is it in the news?

• Recent attention to Diel Vertical Migration (DVM) is attributed to its significant role in carbon sequestration.

About Diel Vertical Migration (DVM)

• DVM involves the coordinated daily movement of marine organisms, especially zooplankton, between the ocean’s surface and deeper layers.
• At sunset, deep-sea organisms ascend from the mesopelagic layer (200-1,000 m deep) to the epipelagic layer (surface to 200 m), driven by the need for food.
• DVM allows deep-sea marine organisms to feed on phytoplankton during the night, avoiding diurnal predators.
• It stands as the Earth’s most extensive daily biomass migration, occurring daily across all oceans.
• Serves as a crucial carbon sink by extracting carbon from surface plankton during feeding in the mesopelagic layer.
• Mesopelagic creatures carry extracted carbon with them when migrating back to deeper oceans.
• Predators consuming these creatures receive the carbon, and when producing carbon-rich waste, it sinks to the ocean floor, remaining trapped for millennia.