Moving megamouth

Morgan Strong's blog | Created 1 decade ago

In September this year we moved the mighty megamouth shark. He was living in a 7000 litre tank of ethanol at our Perth Museum. In 2011, demolition works were going to be performed at the nearby Francis Street Building, and 7000 litres of ethanol was a bit too dangerous to have so closeby.

Thus, a monumental move was planned.

This move also allowed restorative conservation to be applied. Our conservation department arranged for the development of a very cool tank (which looks somewhat like a Jules Verne style submarine) and developed some great new techniques for restoring the megamouth shark.

This move took over a year to plan, and the iconic nature of the shark meant there was no room for error.

To document the move, we made a little documentary and built a website.

Check it out and tell us what you think: http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/megamouth.

26 Nov 2010

Moving Megamouth Feature

On 22 September 2010 Megamouth III, the WA Museum's extraordinarily rare and valuable megamouth shark, was moved from Perth into a purpose built tank at the WA Museum – Maritime in Fremantle.

Moving Megamouth was a massive logistical activity that took over one year to plan. Over 7000 litres of ethanol had to be disposed of, a fragile and priceless specimen had to moved across a city, and extensive and ongoing conservation processes had to be developed.

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Video
Western Australian Museum