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The Fish Department - Research

Vanessa Valenzuela & Danielle Ord

Vanessa Valenzuela and Danielle Ord in the Spirit House, March 2006. Photo: M. McGrouther © Australian Museum. View larger image.

Vanessa and Danielle are now working on the Vacola jar replacement project. They join Liz and Morgan, who began work in February, in the gargantuan task of replacing all the old Vacola preserving jars in the fish collection.

Vacola jars seal by clipping a metal lid over a rubber o-ring. Over time, many of the rubber o-rings have perished (making the jars very difficult to open) or worse still, leaching black pigment into the alcohol which stains the specimens.

Vanessa and Danielle worked in the Spirit House for three months, beginning in March 2006. They swapped thousands of specimens out of the old Vacola jars and into new screw-finish food jars. A polyethylene plug was inserted into the neck of each jar to reduce evaporation of the alcohol.

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