From May 28 to June 5, 2026, faculty members and students from the Institute for Ocean Engineering at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School (Tsinghua SIGS) carried out the 2026 research expedition in the northern South China Sea. The voyage was conducted under the framework of the Twilight Zone of West Pacific: Ecosystem Research Project (TOWER), an initiative endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030).
The expedition focused on three key scientific questions proposed by the large-scale research program: biodiversity and biomass assessment in the ocean twilight zone, the transport and transformation of organic carbon, and dynamic monitoring of vertical organic matter fluxes. Systematic investigations were conducted on macrofaunal community structures, microbial carbon pump efficiency, and diel vertical migration patterns at depths ranging from 200 to 1,000 meters.
United Nations: Achieving the ocean we want by 2030
Launched in January 2021, the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), the ‘Ocean Decade’, provides a convening framework for a wide range of stakeholders across the world to engage and collaborate outside their traditional communities to trigger nothing less than a revolution in ocean science.
The TOWER project, as one of the existing projects within the Joint Exploration of the Twilight Zone Ocean Network program, focuses on the formation and dynamics of the twilight zone ecosystem of the Western Pacific Ocean and particularly the South China Sea (SCS). This region is a less explored area with urgency in ecological research and sustainability regulation.
The twilight zone (between 200-1,000m) of this region has not been fully investigated in terms of ecosystem structure, biodiversity dynamics and metabolic activities. Therefore, the mission of the TOWER project is to uncover this ecosystem before it is completely ruined by human impacts and climate change.
In the South China Sea, mining of natural resources, discharge of untreated waste water, oil shipment and unregulated fishery, have led to increasing impact on the environment and life in the twilight zone. Therefore, the knowledge and data provided by the TOWER project will send warnings to policy makers and inspire the young generation for marine protection and scientific research.
Source from the Institute for Ocean Engineering
Video by Jiang Yuelu, Wang Yunning
Edited by Chen Jundou
Reviewed by Lin Zhoulu and Nie Xiaomei
Layout by Peng Bin and Lu Qianyun
