At the Deep Sea Biology Symposium in Aveiro, Portugal last week, Jamieson provided a guided tour of the trenches. The tools of the trade are typically autonomous, camera-outfitted platforms that work something like this: a dead fish is strapped to a metal scaffold and sent to the bottom of a trench. As fish, eels, shrimp, and other alien species come in for the free buffet, the lights go up and cameras capture the scene. With time, the next level of predators come in, drawn by the unusually high density of prey; if you're lucky, multiple trophic levels can show up in the same frame.