UV fluorescing ink to mark survey stations?

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UV fluorescing ink to mark survey stations?

Postby Johannes » Aug 6, 2012 12:03 pm

Hej!

I'm right now in Swaziland, surveying a granitic boulder cave with quite some length potential. This is done in close cooperation with Swazi Trails, who initiated and sponsor this study and also guide tourist groups through the cave. Partly because the guided tours are advertised as "adventure caving" (i.e., tour in a cave without any installations of any kind), we are extra cautious about permanently mark the survey points. So far we have only used chalk to mark the points; they will be easy to remove. However, the cave is very complex, with side passages everywhere so we will obviously need some way to mark the survey points more permanent (I guess the survey will take years to finish). One thought that came up was to use UV fluorescent color to mark the points; they would then be invisible in normal light but show up if we bring UV-light. Is there anyone on this forum that has experimence or thoughts to share about the use of UV fluorescent color for this? I guess two points to consider is how permanent the markings may be, and the potential toxicity of the color.

(For those intrested in the project, we have an irregularly updated blog at http://gobholocave.wordpress.com/.)

Cheers, Johannes
Johannes Lundberg
Stockholm, Sweden
www.johanneslundberg.se
www.speleo.se
Johannes
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