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THE SEA OF CORTEZ Exploring Beneath Steinbeck's Wake MISSION DISPATCH 7 • 03/31/03 Edie Widder - HARBOR BRANCH Oceanographic Institution It's 4 AM and I'm sitting in the darkened ROV control room, my laptop balanced on my knees, watching the wall of monitors that are the output from the ROV's eyes. We are all up at this ungodly hour to try to get in one last dive before the end of the cruise. Last night, in anticipation of this final dive, there was a frenzy of Styrofoam decorating  going on as folks who hadn't yet sent their Styrofoam mementos of the cruise to the depths
decorated and signed each other's masterpieces and then strapped them to the outside of the ROV. On most
cruises its Styrofoam cups that serve this function, but this cruise has seen an exceptional number of Styrofoam
heads as well. This came about because during our mid-cruise layover in La Paz we happened upon a store that
stocked these in rather surprising abundance. I wonder why. Are there a lot of wig wearers in La Paz? We got
some pretty funny looks as we cleaned out their stock and even funnier looks as we strolled down the street,
Styrofoam heads tucked under our arms. Crazy gringos! I had mine decorated and signed a few days ago and sent
her down to 3160 m in Farallon Basin. Today's dive is in Cerralvo Trough, which has a bottom depth of only 1630 m,
so these heads won't come out as small.
The heads will be nice reminders of what has been a very good cruise. There have been no mind-bending discoveries.
No chance encounters with a giant squid picking its teeth with the bones of a sperm whale. But we have collected
a lot of valuable specimens and data, much of it still to be analyzed. As Steinbeck puts it so well at the close
of "The Log from the Sea of Cortez", we don't think of these data and specimens (and Styrofoam heads) as trophies,
"but rather as drawings, incomplete and imperfect, of how it had been there. The real picture of how it had been
there and how we had been there was in our minds, bright with sun and wet with sea water and blue or burned, and
the whole crusted over with exploring thought." All of our specimens and data - these incomplete and imperfect
drawings - will be added to our growing picture of this largest of Earth's ecosystems, the midwater.
P.S. - As proof of the old adage "It ain't over, till it's over," right after I typed that last sentence a new animal popped up on our screens. Not a giant squid, but rather the funniest little squid that any of us has ever seen. It made us all laugh out loud and the consensus was that it looked like a transparent hippo with a rasta hairdo and a helicopter tail. According to our squid expert, Brad Seibel, it's Helicocranchia, also known as the 
"Piglet squid," only with something odd about the arms. Once we recovered it I checked the arms for
luminescence. No luck there, but further analyses will be in order.
That's why we were all up at 4 AM. Because you sure wouldn't want to miss seeing a transparent hippo with a rasta hairdo and a helicopter tail! 
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