Although CALIPSO was built to study clouds and airborne particles, it has also provided a new perspective on ocean life, allowing researchers to study diel vertical migration (DVM) at a global scale for the first time. The daily movement through the water column of small marine organisms – from planktonic dinoflagellates and crustaceans to fish and squid – has long been studied from ships, but the view from space has yielded insights that improve understanding of the Earth’s carbon cycle and can be used to calibrate climate models.