responsibility for preparing the plan in concert with the Environmental Protection 

 Agency and other agencies. 



That law required an assessment of national needs and problems pertaining to 

 ocean pollution research and development and the development of a national plan 

 for coastal pollution research. It also solicited policy recommendations concerning 

 ocean pollution research. An interagency committee was formed to develop a com- 

 prehensive 5-year ocean pollution research plan. To that end, workshops involving 

 representatives from public and private sectors met and contributed to the plan. 

 Various subcommittees and workshops sponsored by the interagency committee 

 identified the following major research concerns for the marine area: 



• Description and measurement of critical functional components of undisturbed 

 and perturbed ecosystems. 



• Measurement of rates and interactions associated with processes and fluxes 

 within individual organisms and in major ecosystems. 



• Determination and evaluation of importance of effects (both short- and long- 

 term) on components, processes, and fluxes that constitute significant alterations 

 in organisms and ecosystems. 



• Definition of the assimilative capacity for degradable materials in relation to 

 other uses of the marine environment. 



• Determination of effects of long-term, low-level, chronic pollution resultingfrom 

 spills, production, and operational discharges in development of predictive 

 models. 



• Improvement of our ability to choose waste treatment strategies and outfall sites. 

 Evaluation of nutrient characteristics of particular in-shore marine ecosystems, 

 separating natural from human-made variations, and accurate determination of 

 the degree and persistence of change that any proposed municipal discharge is 

 likely to produce. 



The list of future research needs also reflects, and in some instances strengthens, 

 research efforts started in the past decade in response to pollution incidents that 

 occurred in the coastal zone as well as continued efforts to maintain and improve the 

 ecological "health" of the zone. Subjects for the chapters of this monograph were 

 selected to highlight either events that underscore pollution problems or research 

 efforts that emerged from them. Definition of the assimilative capacity of coastal 

 waters to human wastes (the subject of the first paper) has received much attention, 

 particularly during the latter part of the decade. Papers dealing with the Chesapeake 

 Bay and the New York Bight were chosen to illustrate both the problems and 

 progress in pollution control of valuable coastal areas and may serve as examples of 

 sites where capacity to assimilate specific pollutants has been exceeded. Discussions 

 of the impact of specific pollutants, such as nutrients, oil, and toxic substances, also 

 are presented. 



It is appropriate, as a starting point, to examine the assimilative capacity of the 

 oceans (Paper I. The Oceans and the Wastes of Human Societies). In a sense, this 

 sets the stage for the following papers. Assimilative capacity is defined as the amount 

 of a given material that a water mass can absorb without resultant unacceptable 

 impacts, be they upon living organisms or nonliving resources. This amount is deter- 

 mined by titration of the polluting substance and becomes evident at an endpoint. 

 (Pollutant concentrations that result in an effect before an endpoint is reached are 

 referred to as checkpoints.) Radioactivity is used as an example in which unaccept- 

 able amounts of ruthenium- 106 in the seaweed Porphyra near the Windscale 

 Processing Plant in the United Kingdom constitute an endpoint. Examples are given 

 of wastes in the U.S. coastal waters in which the assimilative capacity is not fully 

 reached and others in which endpoints indicate that the capacity is nearing satura- 

 tion. The role of monitoring in assessing assimilative capacity and the use of physio- 

 logical responses as indices of adverse effects are discussed. 



