I've found a few threads on flying with coral, and there were lots of opinions, but not so many real recent experiences. I thought I would share mine while I wait to board the plane.
Long story short, I had an opportunity to bring a frag to someone on this forum as part of a trip I had planned. The TSA website clearly says coral can fly in a clear container with water in your carry-on, but not in checked baggage. I was skeptical how this would go so I reached out to the TSA, which resulted in them sending me to the webpage I had already read. (Ask a silly question...)
A few weeks ago I had another trip through the same airport so I asked the guy scanning my carry-on about bringing coral onboard. He recommended that I keep it in a container less than 3.4 oz and it would be fine.
3.4oz isn't very big, but I did find 3oz makeup jars on Amazon that were big enough in diameter to hold my frag.
I showed up at the airport quite early just in case. When I got to the end of the security line I held up the jar, explained that it was a sample of live coral, and asked if it had to go on the belt, or if it could be hand inspected.
The security guy was all "say what?" at first, but once it sunk in what I said he said "Like in Coral reef? That pretty cool!". Another agent over heard all this and told us it didn't need to go through the x-ray tunnel and carried to the person who did the manual inspection of bags.
They looked at the jar, checked it with some sort of wipe, and handed it back to me. All in it added 2 minutes to my trip through security.
Long story short, I had an opportunity to bring a frag to someone on this forum as part of a trip I had planned. The TSA website clearly says coral can fly in a clear container with water in your carry-on, but not in checked baggage. I was skeptical how this would go so I reached out to the TSA, which resulted in them sending me to the webpage I had already read. (Ask a silly question...)
A few weeks ago I had another trip through the same airport so I asked the guy scanning my carry-on about bringing coral onboard. He recommended that I keep it in a container less than 3.4 oz and it would be fine.
3.4oz isn't very big, but I did find 3oz makeup jars on Amazon that were big enough in diameter to hold my frag.
I showed up at the airport quite early just in case. When I got to the end of the security line I held up the jar, explained that it was a sample of live coral, and asked if it had to go on the belt, or if it could be hand inspected.
The security guy was all "say what?" at first, but once it sunk in what I said he said "Like in Coral reef? That pretty cool!". Another agent over heard all this and told us it didn't need to go through the x-ray tunnel and carried to the person who did the manual inspection of bags.
They looked at the jar, checked it with some sort of wipe, and handed it back to me. All in it added 2 minutes to my trip through security.
