
How to Ship a Beluga Whale via UPS - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/how-to-ship-a-beluga-whale-via-ups/
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Animats
The infrastructure for moving big, heavy things is quite well developed. Most
people never deal with it, but it's all in place. It only costs about $1100 to
move a shipping container from Shentzen to Long Beach by ship. Heavy air
transport is much more expensive, but quite available.

For moving really heavy things, check out Mammoet, the world leader in heavy
transport. You call them when you need to move a zinc refinery to the Arctic.

~~~
jotm
People regularly import American trucks into Europe. It costs ~$2000 to ship
an F150 from New York to Hamburg - more if you want it in a container.
Apparently it's cheaper than buying them locally...

~~~
wil421
I've heard of people buying motorcycles breaking them down into separate
pieces shipping them to their country. Once the arrive they reassemble them to
avoid paying heavy import taxes.

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blakeja
"I just say yes, then figure it out later"

I like that.

~~~
logicallee
Another way to read this is, "Never, ever have a free price point."

> When the Georgia Aquarium broke ground in 2005, _UPS made a generous
> donation: at no cost,_ they offered their logistics and shipping services
> for whatever the facility needed.

Fair enough. I like it. So how did the aquarium reply:

>"we’d like to transport ... four whale sharks in Taipei and two beluga whales
in Mexico to Atlanta".

There is no way UPS would have been shipping those whales at any reasonable
(even discount) price point.

At least they got this article out of it!

~~~
ceejayoz
A charitable donation is not a "free price point", and I doubt a company like
UPS didn't anticipate the possibility that the open-ended donation might be
somewhat expensive.

~~~
kijin
UPS knew what they were getting into. You don't pledge transportation services
to the world's largest aquarium without expecting to ship some fish.

The publicity was probably worth the cost. If I had to ship a terracotta army,
I'd much rather go with a company that is known to have successfully shipped a
couple of sharks and whales.

~~~
acveilleux
The cost was probably tabulated and tax deductible. That helps.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't understand this mentality. Costs are _always_ tax-deductible, it's not
as if this is some added perk. Same with donations, "ooh, donations are tax-
deductible!" Yeah, so is an advertising campaign, you're not doing me a favor
here.

~~~
s_baby
If you've already decided you're going to be charitable you can be much more
generous because of the deduction.

With that said Georgia Aquarium keeps killing their beluga whales.

~~~
StavrosK
> If you've already decided you're going to be charitable you can be much more
> generous because of the deduction.

Can you explain that a bit? If I'm going to spend $1000 on ads, I can write
them off as an expense, and save $X off taxes. If I decide to spend it on
charity, will I save more than $X on taxes?

~~~
Turing_Machine
Charity gets you goodwill and free distribution of your message.

Advertising just annoys people -- to the extent that they will install
software designed to block it.

Note that a) UPS didn't have to pay a additional dime for this article, or
hundreds of others (google "UPS shipping beluga") and b) most of us are
reading it voluntarily.

Which do you think is the better deal? Between this article and an intrusive
popup ad jumping in your face, which do you think makes people think more
positively toward UPS?

Without the deduction for charitable contributions, that wouldn't be an
option.

~~~
StavrosK
This is irrelevant. I'm asking why "tax deductible" is touted as a benefit of
charity, when costs are already tax deductible.

~~~
derekja
Costs are subtracted from income to get net income, by contrast charitable
deductions are subtracted directly from the tax owing.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, really? Does that mean that, if you owe $1000 in tax, you can give it to a
charity of your choice, rather than the government? That sounds like a pretty
big advantage.

~~~
derekja
In canada, anyway, you have a limit as to how much you can donate and you
receive tax credits in return. It's not 1:1 though, so it's not as if I can
just donate my taxes to a charity rather than the government.

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userbinator
_A 747 can carry up to 120,000 pounds of volume, so their weight wasn’t the
issue; the issue, says Matthews, was where to put them, and how to distribute
the weight._

The other very important point is to make sure that the load is securely in
place, as something of that weight moving around inside the plane can have
disasterous results:

[http://avherald.com/h?article=46183bb4](http://avherald.com/h?article=46183bb4)

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js2
For some reason this story reminded me of this guy who repos ships:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/14/max-
hardberger-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/14/max-hardberger-
sea-captain-pirates-seized)

If you google his name you can find a few neat stories about him. He wrote a
pretty entertaining book about his adventures too:

[http://www.amazon.com/Freighter-Captain-Max-
Hardberger/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Freighter-Captain-Max-
Hardberger/dp/0964043378)

~~~
digi_owl
Love his "no violence" stance.

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alwold
The cabin shown in the photo says it's a 747. It looks way too small to be a
747. Is it just me?

~~~
teraflop
It's probably the upper deck, which is normally 6 seats across.

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analognoise
In pieces.

~~~
pvaldes
(upvoted because is a logical answer to the question provided. The title don't
say nothing about alive or not).

But I wonder why we want a marine animal to travel by air or in a closed
container when you can easily provide it with a "migration experience" just
putting a submerged cage in a jib and use water instead fuel to fully support
their body weight.

Some problemas with this idea that I can see is how avoid the motorship noise
(Helicopters and planes do a lot of noise also) and speed of the cruise vs
speed of the animals. and the relationship between the cage and the ship

If we could solve those points the most human way to move a beluga should be
by sea in a mix of a submerged sea cage next the prow (if wheater permits) and
pool.

Yes, remember, we have huge ships with huge swimming pools!. People even could
pay an extra price by a "extra-luxe-best-and-first-cruise-in-the-world-with-
whale-shark-experience" (if you need to put the animal safely in a harbour or
if a puntual danger appears you use the jib and put the whale or the shark in
the pool).

You can put all fish and material that you want for the whale in the hold of
the cruise (you could even save some costs of their feeding if you just fish
for the whale in the meanwhile).

If properly done, this will be also a really great publicity for both the
aquarium and the cruise company. No troubles with faeces, the best place to
swim effortless, and the best water quality than a beluga can dream with. Put
some fake whales in front of the cage and the beluga probably will try to
follow them. Less stress, richer life and a healthy exercise for the whale.
Both animals, whale and shark are designed to migrate huge distances and love
it...

Yes, definitely we should explore the idea of creating mobile dolphinariums.

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darklajid
Could've been a nice article. But it said "fish" and "sharks" far too often
and .. well. I doubt that this ever happened if you suck at the basics. Most
offensive:

Matthews was only half-way done: he still had to transport the two beluga
whales from Mexico City — a task that ended up being more logistically
challenging than the first. Though he’d been warned by the aquarium that the
whales were “distressed, and in subpar conditions,” he wasn’t prepared for
what he found.

“The tank was literally in the center of a roller coaster, in the middle of an
amusement park,” he says. “They were put in the tanks when they were 6 feet
long, and at the time of transfer, they were 15 feet long. I thought, how the
hell am I getting these _sharks_ out of this park?"

~~~
zackcrockett
Author here. That quote should read "...how the hell am I getting these
[whales] out of this park?" Thanks for catching that.

I went through and read the rest of the article to double check for other mix-
ups, but this was the only one I found. Whale sharks are technically
classified as "fish," hence my use of the word to refer to them throughout.
Thanks for reading!

~~~
DenisM
I just scanned the article, it seems correct now in its use of
shark/fish/whale/etc designators.

It's a confusing situation with both belugas (who are whales, and therefore
mammals, and not fish despite their appearance) and whale-sharks (who are
sharks, and therefore fish, but not related to whales despite their name). Add
to that things like fish-tanks and so on, and you got a lot of room for
confusion, so it pays to double-check everything!

