In June 2026, an international team of scientists aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) spent 14 days exploring the tropical midwaters off the coast of Brazil. They returned with 31 previously undescribed species, a rate of discovery that ranks among the fastest ever achieved in marine biology.
“This is the largest habitat on Earth, and it is filled with incredible animals we are only just starting to understand,” said Karen Osborn, the expedition’s chief scientist and a research zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
The haul included nine species of jellyfish, seven siphonophores (colonial organisms related to jellyfish and corals), seven comb jellies (ctenophores), four larvaceans (tadpole-like creatures that build intricate mucus houses), two giant rhizarians (single-celled organisms visible to the naked eye), a new amphipod, and a new species of gossamer worm in the genus Tomopteris.
What sets this expedition apart is not just the number of discoveries but the speed at which they were confirmed. In traditional taxonomy, describing a new species can take years or even decades, requiring painstaking morphological comparison and, increasingly, genetic sequencing that often must wait until specimens return to a land-based lab.
This expedition changed that by bringing the lab to the sea.
The research vessel and its remotely operated vehicle, SuBastian, were equipped with a suite of advanced imaging systems. MBARI’s DeepPIV system uses laser sheets to create 3D scans of gelatinous animals in their natural state, critical for organisms that are easily deformed by conventional collection methods. The EyeRIS remote imaging system provided non-invasive 3D capture. A shadowgraph camera from JAMSTEC (the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) captured finer structural details, revealing features like the protective shield tissues of a siphonophore that even the 3D scans missed.
Most remarkably, the team brought a Squid confocal microscope, an open-source design from Stanford University’s Prakash Lab, onboard for the first time at sea. Using it, they imaged the living 3D cellular structure of a large single-celled protist, revealing its glass skeleton and the interaction between cellular architecture and organism function in real time.
“This opens a new door for researching deep-sea physiology, linking cellular architectures to organism function,” said Manu Prakash of Stanford. “We can now witness live internal processes within these extreme organisms adapted to withstand immense pressure and darkness.”
Alongside the imaging, the team conducted onboard genome sequencing led by Cheryl Ames of Tohoku University and John Burns of Bigelow Laboratory, enabling rapid confirmation of new species within days rather than years.
The Midwater World
The ocean’s midwater, the layer between the sunlit surface and the dark seafloor, is Earth’s largest habitable ecosystem and its least explored. It is a world of gelatinous animals adapted to extreme pressure and near-total darkness, where gossamer worms move faster than their fragile bodies would suggest and glass squid drift at depths of nearly 800 meters.
The team observed far more diversity and abundance than they had anticipated. One striking sighting: a pelagic octopus (Haliphron atlanticus) feeding on a bright red jellyfish at 800 meters depth, providing rare insight into midwater food web dynamics and carbon cycling.
The expedition was the third in a series of “Designing the Future” cruises funded by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Ocean Shot Research Grant Program, supporting two midwater research programs based at the University of Western Australia and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
“The novel suite of technologies on this cruise is a glimpse into the future of marine biological science,” said Jyotika Virmani, executive director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
Note: Based on reporting by The Guardian (June 26, 2026) and the Schmidt Ocean Institute press release (June 3, 2026). See The Guardian and Schmidt Ocean Institute.