July, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 3 
It is fortunate for us that most of the 
publications of this group were available to us 
before we began the Bight 4 98 sampling. We 
found a number of southern species in our area 
for the first time, and having references for this 
southern fauna was most helpful. At the end of 
his presentation Dr. Hendrickx showed us 
slides of a number of species taken over the 
years in trawls. Various crabs and shrimp, plus 
the occasional stomatopod graced the screen. 
Some of the shrimp, in particular, were 
amazingly brightly colored for large non- 
palaemonid species. We then returned to the 
meeting area for a review of some specimens, 
although little time remained. He confirmed 
the Plesionika carinirostris specimen, then 
examined a series of drawings prepared by 
Todd Zimmerman of the Crustacea Section 
showing southern species Todd collected in 
southern California during the recent El Nino. 
Some were recognized, including a majid 
species described originally from Peru, found 
in the Gulf by Dr. Hendrickx, and intertidally 
at La Jolla by Todd. Others were not 
recognized, and may be new. We wrapped up 
the meeting with cordial handshakes and sent 
him off to rejoin his family, busy exploring the 
museum all day. 
SPECIMEN CONSERVATION 
At the Bight 4 98 polychaete problem meeting 
on 21 June, Leslie Harris brought to the 
attention of attendees a recent article on the pH 
of preservatives and how it is affected by 
Resistall labeling paper (Andrei & Genoways 
1999). Resistall is specially treated to coat each 
of it’s fibers with a resin which markedly 
increases it’s wet strength, a most desirable 
quality for long term archival. The treatment 
also, however, yields a paper with a pH ranging 
from 4.5 to 5.2. Lor long term archival acid- 
free papers should be used, and Resistall is far 
from acid-free. The authors examined the 
actual impact of use of various sized labels of 
several paper weights in several fluids to 
determine if the acidity of the paper was a 
significant problem for long-term storage. 
Their tests show clearly that it is. They 
recognize in their report that the absolute pH of 
the solution cannot be measured because 
alcohol gives a skewed reading, but they found 
the trend of decline in preservative pH, due to 
the labels, identical in alcoholic and aqueous 
media. 
They made no recommendations as to what to 
do about the situation, sticking to just reporting 
the results. Because of fluctuation in 
preservative pH with temperature cycling, 
residual acidity of alcohol manufacture, 
leaching of alcohol soluble compounds from 
specimens, and leaching of fixative from 
specimens into the preservative medium, 
marble chips are being used in containers 
holding taxa with calcareous tests at CSDLAC. 
We will begin using the buffering capacity of 
marble chips to combat the acidity coming 
from labels in all samples now that we have 
been informed that it is a problem. We 
recommend that others follow suite. They are 
a cheap and readily available way of 
countering the acidity introduced by use of 
Resistall labels, without losing the benefit of 
the added label-strength such use provides. 
Thank you Leslie, for bringing the problem to 
the attention of the membership. Tom Parker 
(CSDLAC) has also provided a reference to a 
website (Society for the Preservation of 
Natural History Collections) that deals with a 
number of similar problems of specimen 
conservation and storage. Connect with them 
at 
http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/spnhc/ 
indextestside .htm 
-Don Cadien (CSDLAC). 
ANOTHER Plesionika 
We have added another pandalid shrimp to our 
local fauna as a result of the collections made 
on the recent Intercalibration cruise. On a 
trawl at about 150 m we brought up a single 
specimen of a shrimp that was unrecognized in 
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