The subject pretty much states my question, now I will provide a bit of background.
A family member, who lived on the west coast of Florida Chave de Manasota, collected tens of thousands of fossilized sharks teeth between the mid-1940s and the late 1970s. I have now become involved in deciding what to do with these sharks teeth. Here is one of the multitude of pictures available showing samples of these types of sharks teeth:
The vast majority of this collection ranges in size between a dime and a quarter and likely has the same level of hardness.
If you've visited one of the beaches in this part of Florida in the last 25+ years, you probably know that finding these treasures is no longer as easy as it used to be. When I was a kid (late 1970s), I could usually come up with 10+ teeth in about a 2 hours stretch. However, by the time my kids were of the age where this would be of interest (early 2000s), we were lucky if we found one a day.
What I'd like to do is return these teeth to the area just off shore of this beach thus giving future searchers a better chance of "re-finding" them.
Let's assume for the purposes of this question that the airplane involved would be a Cessna 172S. What would be a good way of doing such a drop without harming the aircraft itself?
I assume just dropping them out the window risks blow back that could damage the aluminum fuselage or tail assembly.
A couple of notes:
- This is NOT a question about the legality of dropping items from an airplane in the United States. I am well versed with 14 CFR § 91.15 - Dropping objects, which states:
No pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft in flight that creates a hazard to persons or property. However, this section does not prohibit the dropping of any object if reasonable precautions are taken to avoid injury or damage to persons or property.
I am not interested in a solution harmful to the environment. Thus dropping them in taped boxes or rolled up newspaper would not be warranted, because that would be littering.
I'm certainly aware that renting a boat and dropping them off the side would be an alternative. That said, for the purposes of this question, I am specifically asking how to achieve this using a Cessna 172 (or similar) high wing GA airplane.