Mormon women can wear new sacred undergarments. Some wonder: Why now?

PROVO, Utah (NPR) — This is the first summer The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has offered the underclothing without sleeves in its nearly 200-year history.

Brigham Young University student Dara Layton, a Mormon, shows the new clothes she can wear since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made changes to its sacred undergarments. (Photo by Ciara Hulet/NPR)

Ciara Hulet
August 19, 2025
NPR/RNS

PROVO, Utah (NPR) — Even on scorching summer days, faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wear sacred religious garments underneath their clothing.

But Brigham Young University student Dara Layton answered the door on a 100-degree day in Provo wearing something very new to her: a tank top.

For years, she only wore shirts that fully covered the cap sleeves of the religious undergarment. Then last fall, her church opened up a new option with thick straps instead.

This is the first summer the faith, widely known as the Mormon church, has offered the underclothing without sleeves in its nearly 200-year history.

Many Mormon women are celebrating the new garments, which they’ve been requesting for years. Others say the church’s all-male leadership should have listened to them sooner. As for Layton, she’s just excited.

“My shoulders, they, like, have never been more tan in my entire life,” she said, laughing.

The redesign isn’t available in the U.S. yet, but that’s not stopping American women from getting their hands on them from other countries. That includes some social media fashion influencers who post about how to style the religious wear for their tens of thousands of followers.

Layton thinks the clothes in her closet have doubled since she got the sleeveless garment about a month ago.

“I went on probably the biggest shopping spree I’ve ever gone on in my entire life,” she said. “But I was just like, so excited to have new styles that I could wear.”

Hangers squeaked as she showed off her closet, now full of shirts without sleeves — including the same tank top in about five different colors.

She laughed again. “I really kind of just went crazy. It was really bad.”

Adult church members receive the garments as part of temple ceremonies. That includes the top, and also bottoms that go to the knees. There are different fabric options, from cotton to silky nylon to a polyester/spandex blend, but always in white.

It’s not the only religion with clothing that shows a commitment to God — the church compares the garment to other religious wear like a nun’s habit or the robes of a Buddhist monk.

So even though it was a sweaty summer day, Layton still wore the extra layer because it’s sacred to her.

“They are about this two-way promise that we make between us and God,” she said. “And it’s just a way to remind ourselves to bring Christ into our everyday lives.”

But not all women are excited about the sleeve removal. Some are confused — they thought they were supposed to be different as Mormons, and now they’re dressing like everyone else.

RELATED: Mormon women are finally allowed to wear sleeveless tops. Here’s why some are grieving.

Other women are angry and wonder why they sacrificed to cover their shoulders for so long, only for them to be OK to show now, said Jana Riess, a member of the church and an American religion historian and columnist for RNS.

“There’s a lot of frustration that the church is not acknowledging the fixation that it had on women’s bodies, and they’re really pretty sad,” she said.

The church’s focus on modesty for girls and women, Riess said, became extreme in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As an example, she pointed to a church periodical taking an angel depiction and adding sleeves to it.

Part-time legal assistant Rachel Gerber remembers wearing a tankini swimming suit to a church activity when she was 14, but a leader told her it was inappropriate and that she had to cover up.

“And I got, like, pissed. I was super upset. And someone was like, ‘Rachel, you have to wear it or go home,'” she recalled.

Gerber is a mom of two and runs a social media account called LDS Changemakers to promote gender equality within the church’s current policies.

She believes modesty and garments represent larger inequality in the church. There are new temple undergarments for men as well, but Gerber says it’s always been much easier for men to wear fashionable clothing with garments.

“It controls my life much more than it controls my husband,” she said. “He can wear basically whatever he wants.”

The sleeve change is something many women have wanted for at least 15 years, but the church hasn’t acknowledged that. It declined to comment for this story and didn’t respond to NPR’s interview request.

RELATED: Yes, Joseph Smith practiced polygamy

A short church statement from when the news first broke, though, says some members live in hot and humid areas, and the garment change is to bless them and others who might benefit.

At the end of the day, Gerber calls the sleeveless garment a win and a good step forward.

“I don’t think the leaders of the church, like, hate women. I just think they are within this patriarchal system, trying their best to function within it. But there’s definitely more we can do.”

She said this change signals that church leaders are listening.

The new garment style will be available in the U.S. later this year.

This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and RNS. Listen to the radio version of the story.

AFRICA IS A COUNTRY

New Benin law offers citizenship to descendants of African slaves

Issued on: 30/07/2025 - 

American R&B singer Ciara has become a Beninese citizen thanks to a new law granting citizenship to descendants of African slaves. The Grammy-winning star appeared alongside President Patrice Talon during a ceremony held this weekend in Cotonou, the capital. Ciara is among the first descendants to receive the coveted “green passport” as part of a programme recognising Benin’s historic role in the transatlantic slave trade and aiming to boost tourism. Leonard Wantchekon, professor of Politics and International affairs at Princeton University was FRANCE 24's guest to talk about it.

Kenya: Justice sought for victims of protest crackdowns


Issued on: 30/07/2025 - 

In Kenya, trials against police officers accused of killing protesters are multiplying. A court in Nairobi is hearing the case of Rex Masai, a young man who was shot dead while protesting last year’s draft finance bill. He was the first in a long list — over the past year, more than 100 protesters have been killed and many others injured.

Tunisia’s “barbechas”: the invisible workforce behind recycling


Issued on: 30/07/2025 - 12:46

They’re called barbechas — men and women who walk for hours each day with bags on their backs, searching for recyclable waste. Their labour is essential to Tunisia’s recycling system, yet most are underpaid and overlooked, especially the women who make up a large part of this informal sector. Growing in number, these workers are a stark reflection of the country’s economic and migration crises.

He Said, She Said - How misinformation clouds the memory of accuser and accused in sexual assault cases

University College Dublin

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Screenshots from the video of a date with Samuel (top row) or Jessica (bottom row)

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Credit: From research paper.

A new study suggests both defendants and complainants are equally prone to memory distortions in sexual assault cases.

Challenging long-held assumptions about how memory distortion should be understood in the courtroom, this research delivers compelling evidence that both the accused and the complainant in “he said, she said” cases are equally susceptible to memory errors.

There are many legal cases where the only evidence is the recollections of the people involved, with experts presenting opinions on the extent to which people can misremember their own experiences.

When it comes to sexual assault cases, the focus is almost always on the memory of the complainant – who is often treated as an unreliable narrator of her experiences – while the accused’s memory rarely comes in for the same degree of scrutiny.

Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, the study by researchers from University College Dublin and University College Cork involved a series of experiments using an immersive first-person video to simulate a date that ended in sex.

Those taking part were later assigned the role of either the complainant or the accused in a fictional sexual assault scenario before being exposed to fabricated “witness” accounts that included misleading details and altered key facts from the video. For example, some participants were shown testimony from a barman claiming that the accused was plying the complainant with drinks, even though the original video showed nothing of the sort.

Across more than 1,300 participants in three separate experiments, it was found that individuals in the role of both complainant and accused were equally likely to absorb and recall false details, even when those details supported their assigned narrative.

“We hope that this study will encourage people to re-examine their assumptions regarding the role of memory in sexual assault cases. We have noticed that these cases often hinge on discussions of the complainant’s memory,” said lead author Associate Professor Ciara M. Greene, UCD School of Psychology.

“As memory scientists, we find this strange, since we know that everyone – male or female, complainant or accused – is human and has the same memory frailties. This study provides concrete evidence that memory errors and distortions are not unique to one side of contentious legal cases.”

For the study, two versions of the simulated date were filmed, one featuring a male actor and the other featuring a female actor.

The two videos were identical in all other respects, with each filmed from the perspective of a person going on a date with the man (Samuel) or the woman (Jessica).

The first cohort of participants in both roles received the same misinformation details (experiment 1), wherein those in experiment 2 and 3 were provided misinformation that was tailored to their assigned roles – that is, information designed to make the sexual assault appear more likely or less likely to have occurred.

Strong misinformation effects were observed in both groups, with the complainant and accused equally likely to misremember details of the events leading up to the sexual encounter.

The study included both male and female victims and perpetrators, but interestingly found that memory distortion effects were not affected by gender.

While the study was based on fictional scenarios, its authors argue it highlights that memory is reconstructive and subject to bias, regardless of one’s role in a dispute.

These results align with the argument made in Associate Professors Greene and Murphy’s recent book, Memory Lane: the Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember, published by Princeton University Press.

Co-author Assoc Prof. Gillian Murphy (UCC School of Applied Psychology) noted that: “We have a responsibility as memory scientists to banish myths about memory. In our book and in this paper, we stress that our memories mostly serve us very well and provide a good account of our experiences, but they can sometimes be prone to error, no matter what side of the courtroom you’re on”.

Misinformation effect among participants assigned to the complainant and accused roles in study 1. Error bars represent standard error of the mean





Number of items of congenial misinformation reported by participants assigned to the ‘complainant’ and ‘accused’ roles in Study 2.





Number of misinformation answers selected by participants in the ‘complainant’ and ‘accused’ roles in Study 3.

Number of misinformation answers selected by participants in the ‘complainant’ and ‘accused’ roles in Study 3.

---

Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-025-13587-y 

Subject of Research

People

Article Publication Date

29-Jul-2025

Study reveals importance of culture in intimate partner violence recovery

IPV affects college students at high rates, with Latina students being at heightened risk

University of California - Riverside

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RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A new study from the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison looking into the mental health and well-being of Latina college students who have experienced intimate partner violence, or IPV, emphasizes the need for culturally responsive approaches to support effective healing.

The study explored two types of well-being: a culturally specific, Latinx-specific well-being, and a more generalizable well-being applicable to the public at large.

IPV is a form of abuse occurring within romantic or intimate relationships. It affects college students at disproportionately high rates. Latina students are at heightened risk.

“Although the research is still growing regarding Latinas and IPV, what we do know is that strict and harmful gendered roles, self-silencing norms, historical trauma, family violence, and social/community experiences make Latinas more susceptible to IPV,” said Nancy Herrera, the first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience in the UCR School of Medicine. “Further, there is a complex relationship of societal, cultural, and individual factors that contribute to Latinas’ heightened susceptibility to IPV.”

Published in the journal Violence Against Women, the study used the Psychosociocultural Framework to examine the role of resilient coping, social support, and marianismo (a traditional Latina gender role) in shaping culturally grounded (emic) well-being and universal (etic) well-being. Findings revealed that these factors collectively explained 19% of emic well-being and 38% of etic well-being, underscoring the relevance of culture in understanding trauma recovery.

Herrera explained that the Psychosociocultural Framework is used to investigate whether and how specific psychological, social, and cultural variables, both individually and collectively, influence education and mental health outcomes. She said the framework was created to understand the experiences of historically minoritized students through a holistic and empowerment lens.

The study found resilient coping was a strong predictor of both emic and etic well-being. Social support was significantly related to etic well-being but not to emic well-being, suggesting that traditional measures of support may not fully capture Latina students’ lived experiences. The researchers found Marianismo was inversely associated with well-being, particularly when internalized in ways that reinforce self-sacrifice and discourage help-seeking. The study acknowledges marianismo’s dual role: it can offer both strength and constraint.

Participants included 453 Latina college students across the United States, all of whom identified as IPV survivors and were no longer in abusive relationships at the time of the study. They completed an anonymous online survey distributed via Latina-centered social media accounts and university programs. 

Herrera said one of the study’s main implications for mental health providers is the importance of attending to the well-being of Latina survivors by considering their cultural and gendered identities. 

“Centering their culture in the context of their trauma is an essential component to their healing, resilience, and educational persistence,” she said. “Research implications include the need to develop, test, and norm questionnaires for the community being studied. That is not to minimize the importance of mental health questionnaires for use across communities; a combined use of culturally informed and generalized mental health questionnaires is overlooked by one form of questionnaire, potentially affecting Latinas’ healing journey.”

A Latina survivor of IPV, Herrera said navigating higher education while healing from her trauma informed her identity as a researcher and psychologist. 

“My healing journey became my inspiration to help other Latinas who are trying to complete a degree while simultaneously healing from their trauma via research and through therapy,” she said. “The likelihood of Latinas entering universities with a history of IPV, experiencing IPV on college campuses, or both, informed this study. Understanding Latinas’ experiences is essential to provide culturally congruent and affirming services that better support their healing and wellness on college campuses.”

Herrera plans to further understand the resilience and healing of Latina survivors within the context of higher education. Her follow-up studies will build upon and expand upon the current study, creating “culturally congruent mental health models and treatments to address the unique and cultural experiences of Latinas adequately.”

“Latinas’ culture and unique experiences add complexity and context that is further augmented as college students,” Herrera said. “Studies like ours can serve as a foundation for attending to the experiences of other women of color who are both survivors of IPV and college students.”

Herrera was joined in the study by Alberta M. Gloria of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The title of the paper is “Latina College Student Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: A Psychosociocultural Approach to Their Etic and Emic Well-Being.”

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

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Journal

Violence Against Women

DOI

10.1177/1077801225134 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Latina College Student Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: A Psychosociocultural Approach to Their Etic and Emic Well-Being.

Article Publication Date

26-Jun-2025

COI Statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 

How A Fake News Study Tested Ethical Research Boundaries – Analysis

 June 11, 2025  

By SwissInfo

A controversial fake news study, carried out by Swiss-based researchers on the social media platform Reddit, has highlighted the ethical responsibilities and challenges of conducting studies on society. 

By Matthew Allen

The research team, which has been linked to the University of Zurich, covertly tested the ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate public opinion with misinformation on a subreddit group.

For several months, the researchers stretched the ethical boundaries of observing social behaviour beyond breaking point. They used Large Language Models (LLMs) to invent opinions on a variety of subjects – from owning dangerous dogs to rising housing costs, the Middle East and diversity initiatives.

The AI bots hid behind fictitious pseudonyms as they churned out debating points into the subreddit r/changemyview. Members of the group then argued for or against the AI-composed opinions, unaware they were part of a research project until the researchers came clean at its completion.

The revelation provoked a storm of criticism within Reddit, the research community and the international media.

At first, the researchers, who will not reveal their identities for fear of reprisals, defended their actions, because the “high societal importance of this topic” made it “crucial to conduct a study of this kind, even if it meant disobeying the rules” of the channel, which included a ban on AI bots.

They later issued a “full and deeply felt apology” as “the reactions of the community of disappointment and frustration have made us regret the discomfort that the study may have caused.”

‘Bad science is bad ethics’

“The issue here is not only about conducting research involving deception,” said Professor Dominique Sprumont, president of the Vaud Cantonal Research Ethics Commission in Switzerland. “It is about willfully breaking the rules of a community of human beings who build trust in their network based on those rules.”

“Furthermore, the scientific quality of the project is more than dubious. Bad science is bad ethics.”

The Swiss team ran into a problem familiar to many researchers: how much information to withhold from participants to make the study realistic.

Previous fake news research has faced the same conundrum, according to Gillian Murphy and Ciara M Greene from the University College, Cork, and University College Dublin, Ireland, who have conducted their own misinformation research and examined the results of other studies.

Researchers sometimes disguise the exact purpose of the study at the outset, and only inform participants once it has been completed, they wrote in an article, published in the journal sciencedirect in 2023.  For example, by stating at the outset that the research is about news consumption in general, rather than specifically on fake news.

Limits to deception

“For some misinformation research, it would be impossible to study how participants naturally respond to misinformation without employing this kind of deception, as participants’ suspicions, motivations and behaviours may change when they know the information they will be shown might be misleading,” wrote the authors.

But the authors also note that there are limits to deception. Researchers have a moral duty to respect the human rights and privacy of test participants, inform them at the outset that they are taking part in research, gain explicit consent for using their data and to take steps to avoid inflicting damage on people.

In this video, we explain some of the ways researchers can approach such research ethically. 

In 2014, Facebook was criticised by academics, lawyers and politicians for covertly manipulating thousands of newsfeeds to test how users’ moods were impacted by negative or positive posts submitted by their friends.

The social media platform said the experiment was important to test the emotional impact of its newsfeed service on users but later admitted it had gone about the study in the wrong way.

Responsibility unclear

The Swiss fake news study on Reddit has likewise been condemned for failing to inform people in advance that they were participating in a research project.

It has also stirred up confusion as to who is responsible. It was conceived by a researcher employed at the University of Zurich and presented to its Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in April of last year as one of four tests – and the only one of the four that involved AI bots.

At the time, the ethics body red-flagged the Reddit study as “exceptionally challenging”, according to the university. It recommended that researchers should inform participants “as much as possible” and fully comply with the rules of Reddit.

But the lead researcher left the university in September and only started the study after leaving, the university says, adding that responsibility for the project and publication therefore lies with the researchers and not the university.

“There were no [Zurich university] researchers or students engaged in the Reddit project at the time it was carried out.”

The research team’s preliminary findings were published at first but were later taken offline.

Stricter review process

Zurich Data Protection Commissioner Dominka Blonski has not yet started a formal probe of the matter, but her office is aware of the controversy. “We do not know whether the research was conducted by the University of Zurich or its faculty, or by individual researchers on their own initiative,” she told SWI swissinfo.ch.

Blonski must first identify whether to investigate the university or individuals. But she is concerned at evidence in media reports that point to potential violations of data protection laws, particularly related to the apparent profiling of some Reddit users.

The university must also contend with unspecified “formal legal demands” from Reddit and is investigating the incident internally.

“In light of these events, the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences intends to adopt a stricter review process in the future and, in particular, to coordinate with the communities on the platforms prior to experimental studies,” said a spokeswoman.

SwissInfo

swissinfo is an enterprise of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Its role is to inform Swiss living abroad about events in their homeland and to raise awareness of Switzerland in other countries. swissinfo achieves this through its nine-language internet news and information platform.

 

Deep-dive dinners are the norm for tuna and swordfish, MIT oceanographers find

These big fish get most of their food from the ocean’s “twilight zone,” a deep, dark region the commercial fishing industry is eyeing with interest.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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image: 

Ciara Willis, foreground, and co-author Kayla Gardner pose with MOCNESS, a series of big nets that are used to target different ocean depths, on an August 2022 research expedition.

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Credit: Courtesy of Ciara Willis

How far would you go for a good meal? For some of the ocean’s top predators, maintaining a decent diet requires some surprisingly long-distance dives. 

MIT oceanographers have found that big fish like tuna and swordfish get a large fraction of their food from the ocean’s twilight zone — a cold and dark layer of the ocean about half a mile below the surface, where sunlight rarely penetrates. Tuna and swordfish have been known to take extreme plunges, but it was unclear whether these deep dives were for food, and to what extent the fishes’ diet depends on prey in the twilight zone. 

In a study published recently in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, the MIT student-led team reports that the twilight zone is a major food destination for three predatory fish — bigeye tuna, yellowfin tuna, and swordfish. While the three species swim primarily in the shallow open ocean, the scientists found these fish are sourcing between 50 and 60 percent of their diet from the twilight zone. 

The findings suggest that tuna and swordfish rely more heavily on the twilight zone than scientists had assumed. This implies that any change to the twilight zone’s food web, such as through increased fishing, could negatively impact fisheries of more shallow tuna and swordfish. 

“There is increasing interest in commercial fishing in the ocean’s twilight zone,” says Ciara Willis, the study’s lead author, who was a PhD student in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program when conducting the research and is now a postdoc at WHOI. “If we start heavily fishing that layer of the ocean, our study suggests that could have profound implications for tuna and swordfish, which are very reliant on the twilight zone and are highly valuable existing fisheries.”

The study’s co-authors include Kayla Gardener of MIT-WHOI, and WHOI researchers Martin Arostegui, Camrin Braun, Leah Hougton, Joel Llopiz, Annette Govindarajan, and Simon Thorrold, along with Walt Golet at the University of Maine.

Deep-ocean buffet

The ocean’s twilight zone is a vast and dim layer that lies between the sunlit surface waters and the ocean’s permanently dark, midnight zone. Also known as the midwater, or mesopelagic layer, the twilight zone stretches between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean’s surface and is home to a huge variety of organisms that have adapted to live in the darkness.

“This is a really understudied region of the ocean, and it’s filled with all these fantastic, weird animals,” Willis says. 

In fact, it’s estimated that the biomass of fish in the twilight zone is somewhere close to 10 billion tons, much of which is concentrated in layers at certain depths. By comparison, the marine life that lives closer to the surface, Willis says, is “a thin soup,” which is slim pickings for large predators. 

“It’s important for predators in the open ocean to find concentrated layers of food. And I think that’s what drives them to be interested in the ocean’s twilight zone,” Willis says. “We call it the ‘deep ocean buffet.’”

And much of this buffet is on the move. Many kinds of fish, squid, and other deep-sea organisms in the twilight zone will swim up to the surface each night to find food. This twilight community will descend back into darkness at dawn to avoid detection. 

Scientists have observed that many large predatory fish will make regular dives into the twilight zone, presumably to feast on the deep-sea bounty. For instance, bigeye tuna spend much of their day making multiple short, quick plunges into the twilight zone, while yellowfin tuna dive down every few days to weeks. Swordfish, in contrast, appear to follow the daily twilight migration, feeding on the community as it rises and falls each day. 

“We’ve known for a long time that these fish and many other predators feed on twilight zone prey,” Willis says. “But the extent to which they rely on this deep-sea food web for their forage has been unclear.”

Twilight signal

For years, scientists and fishers have found remnants of fish from the twilight zone in the stomach contents of larger, surface-based predators. This suggests that predator fish do indeed feed on twilight food, such as lanternfish, certain types of squid, and long, snake-like fish called barracudina. But, as Willis notes, stomach contents give just a “snapshot” of what a fish ate that day. 

She and her colleagues wanted to know how big a role twilight food plays in the general diet of predator fish. For their new study, the team collaborated with fishermen in New Jersey and Florida, who fish for a living in the open ocean. They supplied the team with small tissue samples of their commercial catch, including samples of bigeye tuna, yellowfin tuna, and swordfish. 

Willis and her advisor, Senior Scientist Simon Thorrold, brought the samples back to Thorrold’s lab at WHOI and analyzed the fish bits for essential amino acids — the key building blocks of proteins. Essential amino acids are only made by primary producers, or members of the base of the food web, such as phytoplankton, microbes, and fungi. Each of these producers makes essential amino acids with a slightly different carbon isotope configuration that then is conserved as the producers are consumed on up their respective food chains.

“One of the hypotheses we had was that we’d be able to distinguish the carbon isotopic signature of the shallow ocean, which would logically be more phytoplankton-based, versus the deep ocean, which is more microbially based,” Willis says.

The researchers figured that if a fish sample had one carbon isotopic make-up over another, it would be a sign that that fish feeds more on food from the deep, rather than shallow waters. 

“We can use this [carbon isotope signature] to infer a lot about what food webs they’ve been feeding in, over the last five to eight months,” Willis says.

The team looked at carbon isotopes in tissue samples from over 120 samples including bigeye tuna, yellowfin tuna, and swordfish. They found that individuals from all three species contained a substantial amount of carbon derived from sources in the twilight zone. The researchers estimate that, on average, food from the twilight zone makes up 50 to 60 percent of the diet of the three predator species, with some slight variations among species. 

“We saw the bigeye tuna were far and away the most consistent in where they got their food from. They didn’t vary much from individual to individual,” Willis says. “Whereas the swordfish and yellowfin tuna were more variable. That means if you start having big-scale fishing in the twilight zone, the bigeye tuna might be the ones who are most at risk from food web effects.”

The researchers note there has been increased interest in commercially fishing the twilight zone. While many fish in that region are not edible for humans, they are starting to be harvested as fishmeal and fish oil products. In ongoing work, Willis and her colleagues are evaluating the potential impacts to tuna fisheries if the twilight zone becomes a target for large-scale fishing. 

“If predatory fish like tunas have 50 percent reliance on twilight zone food webs, and we start heavily fishing that region, that could lead to uncertainty around the profitability of tuna fisheries,” Willis says. “So we need to be very cautious about impacts on the twilight zone and the larger ocean ecosystem.”

This work was part of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Twilight Zone Project, funded as part of the Audacious Project housed at TED. Willis was additionally supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the MIT Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability.

###

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News

Paper: “Evaluating the importance of mesopelagic prey to three top teleost predators in the northwest Atlantic Ocean”

https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/82/3/fsaf028/8090274

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Journal

ICES Journal of Marine Science

DOI

10.1093/icesjms/fsaf028 

Article Title

“Evaluating the importance of mesopelagic prey to three top teleost predators in the northwest Atlantic Ocean”