Colossal squid

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4 March 2009

Men at work – fixing the squid

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We’re working on the squid!

Tuesday 10 March -  Thursday 19 March 2009

Level 2, free entry

The colossal squid has been on display now for 3 months and it’s time for a bit of a makeover and a check-up.

So from Tuesday 10  March we’ll be doing some work on the colossal squid and its display tank.  We’re hoping to get everything finished by Thursday 19 March – if everything goes according to plan.  

While we’re doing this work, you won’t be able to see the colossal squid in the tank, but you will be able to see all the other great squid stuff we have for you! This includes a 3D animation, a video that tells the remarkable story of how the squid was caught, examined by the scientists and put on display, and some amazing squid computer interactives.

You’ll also be able to watch the work being carried out on the squid by our team of technicians, conservators, and collection managers.

What’s going on? 
No museum in the world has put such a bulky squid on display – we’re learning all the time. We’re doing a bit more work to make sure the colossal squid and her tank look their best. We’re doing this now, so we can keep her on display for as long as possible.

A first in many ways
Lots of things about the colossal squid project have been a bit of an experiment. No one has tried to keep and display such a big squid in glycol before.  As with many experiments, that’s thrown up a couple of surprises. For example, the metal wire crimps holding up the squid’s arms are reacting to the glycol and corroding - so we need to replace the crimps.

The colossal squid at her best
Half a tonne of colossal squid takes some wrangling, and a small part of the mantle is pressing up against the tank lid. We’re going to try to fix this because it has the potential to damage the tissues of the specimen.

The best possible tank as well
The squid display tank is a complex piece of engineering and there are a few things we need to fix. We are going to make some improvements to the tank design so that getting samples and doing maintenance is easier.

Better access for wheelchairs
We’re also building a wheelchair ramp. This means our visitors in wheelchairs will be able to get a better and much more comfortable view of the squid in the tank. It will also help our many younger and shorter visitors see the squid!

So please bear with us as we do this important work so Wellington’s favourite squid can stay on display. We just hope you don’t have a reaction like this …

We’ll post more about the work and what’s going on next week.

 

9 February 2009

More about squid, now online!

Posted by pamelalovis under Colossal squid, Exhibitions | Tags: , , , , , |
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The Te Papa blog is growing and diversifying and it’s all good.  It reflects the range of collections and expertise in the museum which span art, history, science, plants, animals, fossils, taonga Maori, and the Pacific.  

Check out the recent art blog posts, along with posts on spiders, plants and even fossil tuatara.

Among world museums the interdisciplinary nature of Te Papa’s collections makes us unique – it gives us great strengths, and also some challenges.

For squid fans out there I just wanted to let you know that the colossal squid interactives are now ALL available online through the squid website.  

You can now explore the insides and outside of the big squid from the comfort of your own computer. 

Check out the jaw-dropping footage of the live colossal squid being hauled up onto the San Aspiring fishing boat from the depths of the Southern Ocean in The Squid Files interactive. 

And if you want to find out about life in the dark depths of the Southern Ocean where the colossal squid lives you can have a go with The Deep interactive.

Build a Squid is still going strong – we’ve got about 42,000 squid as of today!

If you’ve played the squid interactives in the exhibition at Te Papa or online and you’ve got a favourite one, tell us!

Or if you’ve got another  computer interactive at Te Papa that you really like then let us know.

 

27 January 2009

I heart the blue whale heart

Posted by pamelalovis under Colossal squid, Whales, Whales | Tohorā | Tags: , , , |
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Move over big squid – there’s competition at Te Papa for the most popular exhibit these holidays ! 

You love the blue whale heart in NatureSpace, including crawling into it, stuffing things inside it (like big toy penguins) and having your picture taken with it. 

The model was a highlight of the Whales | Tohorā exhibition. It was so popular we made two of them! The other heart model is now on tour with the exhibition, which closed at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC on 18 Jan 2009 and will open on 28 February at Exploration Place, in Kansas.

The blue whale heart is a favourite Te Papa photo spot and it’s great to see your pics up on Flickr.

If you’ve got photos of you and your mates with the blue whale heart we’d love to see them!

 

21 January 2009

Kia ora Mr President

Posted by pamelalovis under Colossal squid | Tags: , , |
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Pamela's Obama squid

To ‘honour’ Barack Obama as the new American President I’ve made him a squid.

Possibly not one of the honours he was thinking of when he took office but I thought he’d like it anyway. You can follow his squid adventures:

  1. Go to the Build a Squid interactive,
  2. Click on ‘Find your squid’, 
  3. then ‘Search for any squid by name’ and enter ”Barack Obama”.

It was a job deciding what colour (or more appropriately colours) he should be.  But I decided on the following: 

  • the biggest eyes because he’s got a lot to look out for;
  • a good strong mantle (a bit like having a pair of wide human shoulders) because he’s got a heap of things to do and much to deliver on;
  • a nice pair of big purple fins (purple being a healthy mix of red and blue) to help him steer things in the right direction;
  • and long tentacles with a tint of green to reach out for all those ‘green’ issues.

Good luck with your new job Mr President…. I hope you like your squid.

 

14 January 2009

Squid in Our Space

Posted by pamelalovis under Colossal squid, Exhibitions | Tags: , , , , |
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The colossal squid is a popular girl! We open the doors at Te Papa at 10am each day. After just a few minutes - and even on a beautiful Wellington day like today – there’s a crowd of people down in the squid exhibition, eager to get a good look. Lots of you have taken pics of the colossal squid so you can show your friends “what you did in the holidays”.

Visitors have also been having fun with the colossal squid in Our Space – that’s Te Papa’s new digital interactive where you generate the content. It’s on level 2 of the building, just down from the squid. If you haven’t visited or joined the community then it’s another great thing to do these holidays.

I’m a newbie to Our Space and still finding my way around.  You need to visit a couple of times on-site and remember to join the online community, explore the website and upload your own media.  Then you really start to get the hang of it and realise what a cool thing it is to do!

We loaded some Te Papa squid images before Christmas. Today I checked out if anyone had been using them on The Wall in Our Space.  Once you’ve logged in as a member, you just search on “squid” and you can see what images have been used and when.

So to whoever got creative with the colossal squid, thank you - I love your work, especially the eyeball pic.  Check out another snapshot of colossal squid from the wall here (you might need to zoom out from the wall snapshot and scroll left…).

Feeling inspired? Join the Our Space community! If you’ve got squid images, then we’d like to see them.

 

9 January 2009

Colossal Squid doco on Discovery Channel

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Seen the squid at Te Papa, but still want more on colossal squid?

Then tune into SKY’s Discovery Channel on Sunday 11 January 2009 at 7:30pm to see the New Zealand premiere of the “Colossal Squid” documentary.

The doco was filmed during the great defrost and examination in April last year. The crew came back to film the move of the squid from the thawing/preservation tank to the shiny new display tank in August.  Discovery Channel also helped Te Papa with the preservation of the squid. 

Brief excerpts from the documentary feature in the exhibition audiovisual but you won’t want to miss this chance to see the documentary in full!

If you don’t catch it on Sunday 11 January the doco re-run times are:

Monday 12 January at 1.30 am

Monday 12 January at 8.30 am

Sunday 18 January at 3.30 pm

 

9 January 2009

All clear!

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The bubbles are just about gone and the squid tank is all clear! You can now get a really good, clear view of this amazing specimen.

Last night we had to close off the squid exhibition for a few hours, during our normal Thursday evening opening hours. The team took out about 600 litres of fluid from the tank, lowering the level of the liquid. They then carefully added the liquid back into the tank using a gravity feed, rather than pumping it in – to avoid adding in any air.

The annoying bubbles had been sticking to the tank lid through surface tension. By changing the liquid out in this way, we’ve managed to get rid of nearly all the bubbles.

It was also a chance for us to have a good look at the squid specimen and check out how it’s doing. The squid was sitting quite close against the lid of the tank, which is not ideal as this may cause damage to the tissues. The liquid changeover has improved things but we will need to keep reviewing things over the next few weeks.

We also took the opportunity to add in some more biocide to the tank liquid, to make sure that no nasty moulds are growing on it!

 

8 January 2009

Museum science dissections – a new trend?

Posted by pamelalovis under Colossal squid, Pygmy right whale | Tags: , , , , , , |
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It seems like New Zealand museums are setting a new trend for staging scientific dissections of big interesting animals and getting the public involved in them online.

It’s a great way to engage visitors with the scientific activities of natural history museums – it takes the behind-the-scenes stuff out into the public arena. And it can be a real boost to public knowledge and understanding about animal biology and conservation.

Today Auckland Museum is holding a dissection of a Great White Shark and you can view it on their website from 2pm. The necropsy, or animal autopsy, will raise public awareness of this magnificent, and vulnerable fish species.

Here at Te Papa we have also had great success with making some recent scientific examinations and dissections available online. In April 2008 a team of scientists thawed and examined a colossal squid, but didn’t dissect it. This is the colossal squid now on display , along with lots of info explaining it’s anatomy. While the team examined the big colossal squid specimen they dissected a smaller, incomplete colossal squid specimen and a giant squid specimen and blogged about it live. The information we got  from dissecting these other big squid specimens was vital to understanding the biology of the colossal squid, and then communicating this in the exhibition.

After the success of the squid investigations we then decided to blog about a dissection of a pygmy right whale in May 2008. Looking at our blog stats we still have heaps of people going to these posts about the pygmy right whale heart and lungs – somewhat strange, but true.  I’m not sure why these posts would be so popular - so if anyone out there knows please tell me!

Then in July 2008 the Melbourne Museum held a public dissection of a giant squid, which you can view here. 

From big molluscs we have now moved on to big fish! It’s great to see these new ways of communicating science in museums being explored and our museum-based scientists taking centre stage -  I’m interested to know what others think about this.

 

7 January 2009

Happy New Year! may it be bubble-free

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It’s the seventh day into the New Year, 2009, and the colossal squid continues to attract a huge crowd of visitors every day. We just love how much you are loving it!

We now have more than 23,000 wonderfully creative squid made on Build a Squid. More than 10,800 say they’re from the USA and there’s 6,000 squid from New Zealand.

Nicolai from Hawai’i wants to know how old the oldest squid is. Well, the first ones were made around or a bit before 13 December, so the oldest is now about 26 days old. Here are two squid you can follow:

“LucyRyan” from New Zealand who is now 26 days old, weighs 12 kg and has travelled 234 km. Today she is searching for a t-shirt with ten sleeves… 

“Pamela” from New Zealand who is slightly younger at 23 days old, weighs 10 kg and has travelled 207 km – and has just seen a submarine.

The squid you see that are 0 days old are new ones made each day by visitors to the exhibition itself as well as online users.  Te Papa is open 365 days of the year,  including Christmas Day!

We’ll be working on plans for the Build a Squid interactive in the next few weeks. At the moment all the squid stay up and keep having more adventures.

On the bubble front it’s good to see that the troublesome bubbles in the tank have cleared quite a bit over the last two weeks. We’ll also be lowering the liquid level in the squid tank tomorrow evening and then carefully filling it up again.

We hope this will clear away the remaining bubbles and give  everyone a bubble-free view of the world’s biggest invertebrate.

 

 

 

 

 know that you’re Twittering about it as well be a huge hit.  a.

 

24 December 2008

Colossal best wishes for the holidays from the squid

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Kia ora koutou

It’s Christmas time at Te Papa and the team behind the colossal squid exhibition wishes squid fans everywhere  a happy and safe time over the holidays.

It’s been a colossal year in many ways – and we’ve finished it by bringing to you the only display in the world of a colossal squid.

We know some of you are disappointed that the squid isn’t bigger! Some of you think we’ve got a bigger and better colossal squid out the back somewhere.

But no! this is our biggest colossal squid. It’s not a giant squid remember. A giant squid is a completely different kind of  squid, called Architeuthis dux.

We think our colossal squid is big enough. She weighs 495 kilograms  – which is about 660 Christmas puddings or more than 1,000 pavlovas.

The colossal squid is also a special creature because at this time of year it  reminds us of the planet we share, the things we still have to discover about it and our need to care for it in the future.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to everyone!

 

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