The whiteboard has a message: "Textas in reading room. Bags will go down this arvo.get cupping."
Our international friends struggle with the cryptic advice, understanding neither 'arvo' nor 'textas', but cotton on when they see people decorating polystyrene cups with marking pens, stuffing them with paper towels and putting them in the net bag in the instrument room for dispatch to the abyss.
Martin points out in the sitrep "CASO is a major multinational project for the International Polar Year involving scientists from 18 nations and is led by Australia."
So why are we attaching our decorated cups to the CTD equipment that is being lowered from the ship?
More science. The atmosphere at sea level is 15 psi (pounds per square inch). Below sea level, the deeper you go the greater the pressure. We are taking samples at 4000metres where the pressure would be around 6000 psi.
Our Polystyrene foam containers are made with millions of tiny air bubbles. As they descend the increasing pressure squeezes the air out quite evenly, condensing the cups -potentially to the size of a thimble.
We are making momentos. They might become an ornament, or furnish a child's dolls house.or make a handy shot glass. There are cups with the ship motif, others with icebergs, or penguins or whales. Latitudes and longitudes feature widely along with aronyms CEAMARC and CASO, and dates emblazoned for posterity.
Harvey tells me about the practice on the ships used for CTD sampling by the University of California, Santa Cruz. They decorate polystyrene mannequin heads used for displaying wigs and send them to the deep. Some wonderful shrunken heads return.
Science came alive for me when my little cup returned at 1700; a perfect circle of Adelie penguins, putting a stamp on my voyage.
We are far enough north again for the sun to briefly set. I catch it dip below the horizon just after 2300 waiting for the next CASO samples come up.
Margot Foster is a journalist currently on board the Australian Aurora Australis, an Australian research vessel currently participating in the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML, IPY project 53). She works with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).