May 14 2008
May 14 2008
The decorated Styrofoam cups before the CTD, all normal in size if not in colour.
Today it is all about Squish Cups!
You have no clue what I am talking about? Welcome to the club! Until a few days ago, I never heard about squish cups, but they are one of the cool things you learn about when going to sea for the first time. They are basically a way to keep yourself entertained during the cruise, and a great souvenir for afterwards. And here is how the story goes...
What you need is many white cups made out of styrofoam and a good selection of waterproof pens. You then start decorating your personal cup, with whatever comes to your mind. Our selection ranged from colorful patterns on the cups, maps of Antarctica and the world, and drawings of corals, penguins, to messages for beloved ones at home. Then you stuff your cup with some paper, and all the individual cups from everybody on the ship go together in a mesh bag.
The next step in the life-cycle of a squish cup is that the meshed bag it sits in gets attached to some kind of equipment, which goes into the ocean. It could be a CTD, our towcam, or whatever you do your science with. When the equipment goes over board on one of the strong wires we have, it starts to descend to the deep ocean. One of the fascinating things about the deep ocean is that it not only gets dark and cold down there, but also the surrounding pressure increases. At a depth of about 4000 m the pressure of the overlying water column is about 410 times that at sealevel!. This leads to a dramatic change for our little cups! All the air gets squeezed out of them and they shrink to a much smaller size. Mostly that happens while maintaining there cup-shape, but sometimes the cups get deformed as well. The paper we added to the inside of the cups was made to prevent them from getting into each other, so that everybody on board has the same chance of getting back a great souvenir. When thinking about it, it is truly amazing how certain animals, among them deep-sea corals, can survive the pressure deep in the ocean. But they do, and they don’t seem to be bothered by it...
Our squish cups however have to return to the surface of the ocean with our equipment, and you can see the results in our wonderful pictures. It’s really a great souvenir to take home and something that will always remind me of my first cruise!
Tina van de Flierdt
Photos by Dann Blackwood
Rhian Waller tying the cups onto the CTD frame.
Josef Kuehnast guides the CTD back into the Baltic Room.
Marcy Davies and Zim Zimmerman wonder at the spectacle that is squish cups.
The effect of the pressure on the Squish Cups.
In other science news, we deployed an Otter Trawl this morning.
Deploying the Otter Trawl takes a few more hands than most equipment.
Working out on deck with the trawl is chilly business down here in the Southern Ocean.
Biologist Rhian Waller, assisted by Kate Hendry, picks through the last remnants of the trawl for small pieces of coral.