Led by Dr Adrian Martin at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), the Joint Exploration of the Twilight Zone Ocean Network (JETZON) programme, has empowered science students from around the world through administering a generous bursary from the Grantham Foundation.
The $75,000 donation has enabled 27 students from previously under-represented countries including Cameroon, India, Nigeria and Mexico to attend the Ocean Twilight Zone Symposium. The fortnight-long international conference was hosted at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a joint event organised by the Ocean Twilight Zone TED Audacious Project and JETZON. The symposium covered many hot ocean topics including the importance of the Twilight Zone for biodiversity and climate regulation.
The bursary also allowed over half of the 130 attendees to be early career scientists, by paying for their registration fees, supporting the education and development for scientists from all over the world.
Dr Adrian Martin said, “The Twilight Zone is truly international as it spans the globe. Understanding and developing a sustainable approach to this little known but critical ecosystem therefore requires an international approach so it was fantastic to be able to support attendance by a global group of early career researchers through this generous donation.”
JETZON is a UN Ocean Decade Programme acting as an international coordinator and focal point for Twilight Zone studies. Linking projects from many countries, JETZON seeks to understand the Twilight Zone, the dimly lit region extending downwards to depths of 1,000m which helps regulate our climate and may be home to the largest animal migration on the planet – every day.