I don’t know if you’ve heard but one of the things the scientists and staff here on the JR enjoy doing is decorating Styrofoam cups of various sizes.

You draw on the cups with sharpies to your hearts content then deliver them to the bridge deck where they will be reasonably stuffed with paper towels and set aside to await submersion. When the time comes the cups are dropped into a light mesh bag, secured (to something unknown to me 🙂 and submerged to the current water depth (yesterday: 2,672 m). When they are retrieved you get back a miniature version of your cup, if your lucky it will still be cup shaped, if not…well…the results vary.