Although often neglected, core samples always degrade to some degree in the process of cutting the core, handling it, and studying it. Non-destructive techniques are increasingly common, e.g., the use of MRI scanning to characterize grains, pore fluids, pore spaces (porosity) and their interactions (constituting part of permeability) but such expensive subtlety is likely wasted on a core that has been shaken on an unsprung lorry for 300 km of dirt road. What happens to cores between the retrieval equipment and the final laboratory (or archive) is an often neglected part of record keeping and core management.