Schneier on Security

I am not a marine biologist, but I would think that defrosting it in the preservative solution would allow it to defrost with out rotting.

The microwave would just leave it rubbery, and tasteless. ;)

I also vote for defrosting it slowly in the preservative, perhaps at 1 degree centigrade.

how do you ensure that the defrosted parts don't rot while waiting for the rest of it to defrost.

Hairdryers..... seriously. Using another approach, I might suggest using pumps to circulate a low concentration of fixative in saline and then gradually upping the concentration of the fixative until the desired 5% formalin is reached. At that point, you can then take tissue samples for various histological purposes or even post-fix those samples in glutaraldehyde for other histological protocols.

I'm having trouble understanding how freezing the thing was easier than defrosting. Or do sushi ships spend a lot more money on freezing equipment than any marine biology department has lying around?

Wumpus

I don't see the problem with defrosting it in a giant deep fryer - invite a few hundred people, tell them all to bring a slab. Problem solved.

Perhaps one of the devices used for inducing hyperthermia in oncology patients would work. These are typical radio/microwave devices that are designed to create specific 3D conformal distributions of heat within a cancer patient.
A big squid isn't too much bigger than a very large patient, and a dead squid doesn't have the added complexity of a functioning circulatory system.

I'm having trouble reconciling size vs. storage.

How did they get a 20-meter squid into a 1-meter ice cube? It must pack very small. Being boneless, do they just pour it into a mold, to which it conforms perfectly?

I was surprised they even recommended a microwave process. I imagine it would defrost in an uneven manner, which could promote rotting.

The common way to thaw food, especially fish is to do it in the fridge over night. Temperature in the average refrigerator is, depending on the place inside the cooler, between 4 degrees Celsius (277.15K) and 10 degrees Celsius (283.15K). The proportion between volume and surface of the food might be a problem. It would have been better to freeze the squid in a plane instead of the large block, but that is to late now.

The method works quite well for small samples like the octopodes I got yesterday but these beauties were not longer than my thumb. They tasted very good when coated with some tempura (sp? it's 天�ら in japanese) dough (with a bit of fresh chili and I always put some crushed ice into the dough, makes the result much more crunchier) and deepfried in cocoa butter (the yellowish raw type, not the white stuff which is refined and deodorized and completely tasteless). They look better if you dump them for some 10-20 seconds into boiling saltwater (about 10gr salt/litre) with some vinegar. But it's only for the look (form and color) not for the taste. 10-20 seconds are way to short to transfer enough flavors.

CZ

Re: thawing in fixative

Fixative solutions don't penetrate into huge chunks of tissue well - even in non-frozen specimens, if the piece is too big, and we're talking more than a few centimetres or so - the middle bit breaks down..... For entire animals (mammals) - we pump fixative into the arteries, so it is distributed throughout the whole body - for a giant frozen squid - good luck!

Why don't they plasticise it like they did in the Bodies exibit?

Why wouldn't they do it in a fridge? I read about this last week, that they might microwave it. It just seems like a refrigeration method would be the best, perhaps while maintaining and freezing the tentacles and other thinner portions, so they don't start to decompose in the process.

Did anyone else notice that one of the microwave-proponents is also suggesting buttering the squid up before nuking it? (the "might" link in the original post) But seriously, couldn't they refrigerate the thinner portions while continuing to microwave the thickest portions?

How big is the gaint squid's mouth?