On the Move and Incredible Shrinking Cups

We are off and on the move, sailing towards the Guayamas Basin, our next location for sampling hydrothermal vents. This is a bit further north and closer to Mexico. We may even be able to see land in the very, very, very far distance. I haven't seen land since November 9th. Right now we're still experiencing high waves and wind, so the travel is rather rocky. We did have the last dive go ahead at 9N, and got more samples of Riftia. The one woman who was in the sphere today said that the bobbing on the surface in rocky waves was not fun and she nearly lost her lunch on the sub pilot. Luckily, she didn't.


As I promised, I shrunk some cups. Some of you know what I'm talking about, others are wondering what the heck is wrong with me? The pressure at the bottom of the ocean is intensly strong, so strong that if you punctured a hole in AVLIN the stream of water could cut a person in half before the sphere quickly imploded. Its intense pressure. Styrofoam cups (and wig heads, and cones, and anything else) collapse under this pressure. There is a tradition out here to decorate Styrofoam cups, place them in a mesh bag on the outside of ALVIN, tucked under a safe place, and let them shrink under the pressure as ALVIN dives to the bottom of the ocean. It is really cool, some of the cups can shrink to thimble size, some don't shrink much at all. We've come to realize that the cheaper the cups, the more they shrink! Probably due to more air space between the Styrofoam pieces. I made some cups for Jeboleth and his family, you can see in the first photo that they all look like normal cups. In the second photo, I had to add an undecorated cup to show you how much they shrunk. I also drew cool designs on the other sides of the cups, but those are a surprise for them so you don't get to see that now! We do tons of these out here, in fact one of our PI's (principle investigators) brought trash bags full from a local school she knows. I've made the same type of cup for myself each time I've been out here, a vine of blue morning glories. Blue morning glories are my favourite and I've traditionaly drawn them for each cruise, with the dates. My cup didn't make it into the last bag for the dive, but it will when we get to Guayamas to dive.


I will be answering the Write the Scientist questions for the ship website tomorrow, hopefully. The link they sent us isn't working yet so Maddhatter and I have been busily occupying ourselves with other things. I watched an episode of Firefly tonight (my fav one "Out of Gas") and then we dissected a Riftia worm. I was looking forward to this. I hadn't dissected anything since high school and this was an unusaul organism. I wasn't prepared to be so grossed out. These things have a lot of blood, and the scientist who was showing us how to dissect them did it while they were still alive. I'm not so sure that was necessary, it bothered me quite a bit. More than I had expected actually. Maddhatter was very good at doing the dissections again, goddess bless him!, and I collected the parts into tubes, labeled them and cleaned up the the rest. Still not so sure I want to do more of this, hmmmm. I have to ponder this.


Well that is all for tonight. Its a short post, but with the waves and all I'm kinda getting tired of watching my monitor come closer to me, then move away from me, then move to the right, then to the left, then up, then down..... You get the point. The picture I leave with you tonight is taken from my favourite vantage point on the ship. Its the second deck up, over the rails facing the bow. This is the best place to sit, think, soak up the sun and just have a moment to yourself when you can. Enjoy.