[NHCOLL-L:1640] transporting wet specimens - thank you for advice

[MAGGIE REILLY]

Dear Colleagues

Posting a follow up to my query on the above to thank those that 
replied offering valuable advice - Leonore Barbian, John 
Simmons, 
Holly McEntee, Paula Hildebrandt, Richard Rosenblatt, Kathie 
Wayand Tony Irwin-and to say what I did.
Here is the original query:

we hope to lend another institution, amongst other things,
2 wet -preserved juvenile shark skeletons, both mounted in 
rectangular-section glass display jars with sealed-on glass plate 
lids. The specimens are tied onto glass backplates within the jar 
and the backplates are braced against the sides of the jar with 
rods set top and bottom. Road transport by van over ca 180 
miles is necessary to get the specimens from us to them. I 
have concerns about properly packing these jars for transport to 
minimise the risk to the actual specimens from vibration. How 
best can one do this? We are not keen to remove the specimens 
from the jars and pack them separately. The dimensions of the 
jars are 80x14x12cm and 56x19x12cm. 

What I did was this; we got a large (25 gallon?) plastic drum to 
use as the container; started by topping up the specimens so 
that there was very little air space in the jars; wrapped the jar in 
bubblewrap then put it into a large poly bag and tied the top; 
padded the bottom of the drum with several layers of bubble 
wrap, sat the jars in, used more bubble wrap to pad between 
them, cross-braced the jars using some stout cardboard tubing 
wedged into the drum; filled the drum up with vermiculite and 
polystyrene chips. The van used to transport the specimens was 
a top quality custom-fitted van for the transport of fragile and 
valuable materials. I had confirmation today that the specimens 
arrived in perfect condition at the other institution. Thank you all 
for your help and if anyone wants it I can give a bit more detail on 
the replies I received.


Best wishes

Maggie Reilly 
Maggie Reilly
Curator of Zoology
Hunterian Museum - Zoology Section
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ 
Scotland, U.K.
Tel: +44 (0)141 330 4772
Fax: +44 (0)141 330 5971
mreilly at museum.gla.ac.uk
Hunterian Museum web site - http://www.gla.ac.uk/Museum/