[Music plays and an animation image of the Investigator appears on the screen with spotlights shining from the bridge of the boat, and text appears: Research Spotlight] [Text changes below the ship to read: The Sinking Dead] [Animation image changes to show small ocean creatures, and then the animation image shows a blue whale swimming through the ocean] Narrator: Our oceans are teeming with life, from the tiny to the massive. [Animation image shows Zach the zooplankton popping up in the foreground holding a sign “Hi, I’m Zach” and then the image shows Zach eating smaller phytoplankton] Take Zach here for example. Zach is a zooplankton which are the smallest animals in our oceans. [Animation image shows a large fish appearing from the left of the screen and swallowing Zach whole and then continuing to swim] He spends most of his days snacking on tiny phytoplankton living the life of his dreams, one bite at a time, while he’s alive anyway. [Animation image shows an even larger fish appearing from the left of the screen and swallowing the fish which swallowed Zach] Everything in the ocean is food for something else. [Animation image changes to show a blue whale with a bandage around its head and a thermometer in its mouth, and the image shows the blue whale falling to the ocean floor, and text appears: The Sinking Dead] As marine life, big and small, eventually dies, what remains falls down into the ocean as the sinking dead. [Animation image shows lots of different small creatures falling to the ocean floor around the blue whale, and then the camera zooms in on the blue whale and zombie worms can be seen eating it] As the remains reach the sea floor they may be buried in the sediments or become leftovers for scavengers like zombie worms. [Animation image shows a light grey whale rising from the blue whale] This might seem like the end of the line for the sinking dead but rest assured their deaths have meaning. [Animation image changes to show a sun setting over the ocean] Let’s go back to the surface to understand why. [Animation image shows CO2 bubbles moving down from the air into the ocean] The ocean absorbs loads of carbon and CO2 from the atmosphere. [Animation image shows small phytoplankton appearing which devour the CO2] Remember those tiny phytoplankton, they play a key role by turning billions of tonnes of CO2 into living matter every year. [Animation image changes to show the RV Investigator on the surface of the water, and an inset circle shows scientists hauling a sediment trap to the surface] With the help of RV Investigator scientists have been studying how Zach, [Camera pans down into the ocean to show Zach looking at the sediment trap and a thought bubble appears with text: It’s a sediment trap!] with every bite, and then as part of the sinking dead, can lock away carbon in deep ocean. [Animation image shows the sediment trap moving down through the water, and the camera pans down through 2000m, and 3000m depth] And if they sink far enough that carbon can be locked away for thousands of years, helping to keep CO2 in our atmosphere in check. [Animation image changes to show Zach with a sign around his neck “Hi, I’m Zach”, swallowing phytoplankton, and text appears behind Zach: Find out more at mnf.csiro.au] Find out more about the sinking dead and the research we deliver at mnf.csiro.au. [Music plays and the image changes to show the CSIRO and MNF logos on a white screen, and text appears: Australia’s National Science Agency, Supporting, enabling and inspiring marine science]