PREFACE 



At approximately 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 16, 1978, the super- 

 tanker Amoco Cadiz went aground on a rock outcropping 1.5 km offshore of 

 Portsall on the northwest coast of France. The vessel contained a cargo 

 of 216,000 tens of crude oil and 4,000 tons of bunker fuel. At 6:00 a.m. 

 on Friday, March 17, the vessel broke just forward of the wheelhouse and 

 thus started the largest oil spill in maritime history. During the 

 course of the next 15 days, the bunker fuel and contents of all 13 loaded 

 cargo tanks, which contained two varieties of light mideastern crude oil, 

 were released into the ocean. The oil quickly became a water-in-oil 

 emulsion (mousse) of at least 50% water, and heavily impacted nearly 

 140km of the Brittany coast from Portsall to He de Brehat. At one time 

 or another, oil contamination was observed along 393 km of coastline and 

 at least 60 km offshore. Impacted areas included recreational beaches, 

 mariculture impoundments, and a substantial marine fishery industry. 



h arcr, .3, r. »,ilmot N. Hess, Director of the . v.v , - /omental 

 Research Laboratories (ERL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

 Administration (N0AA), contacted Dr. Lucien Laubier, Director of the 

 Centre Oceanologique de Bretagne (COB) of the Centre National pour 

 1 'Exploitation des Oceans (CNEX0), the French national oceanographic 

 organization. Dr. Hess and Dr. Laubier arranged for participation by 

 United States scientists in a joint Franco-American investigation of 

 physical and chemical manifestations of the spill. On March 24, the 

 agreement was expanded to include cooperative biological investigations 

 through contacts initiated by Dr. Eric Schneider, Director of the 

 Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Research Laboratory in 

 Narragansett, Rhode Island. 



N0AA personnel arrived on March 19 to join the investigation 

 initiated on March 17 by several French scientific teams. Initial 

 photographic over-flights and active beach sampling began on Tuesday, 

 March 21, followed by initial chemical sampling by vessel on Friday, 

 March 24. The team was supplemented with EPA biological observers on 

 Sunday, March 26. Sampling has continued by some segments of this 

 original team until the present time. 



Throughout the period of investigation, active interaction and 

 coordination with the French scientific community have taken place under 

 the auspices of C0B/CNEX0. All sampling has been coordinated with the 

 general ecological impact study designed by the French Ministry of 

 Environment, organized, ,by CNEX0, and operated by several scientific 

 institutions in France^ , making possible a more thorough evaluation of 

 the effects of the incident than would otherwise have been possible. 



- National Museum of Natural History, National Geographic Institute, 

 French Institute of Petroleum, Scientific and Technical Institute of 

 Marine Fisheries, University of Western Brittany, University P. and 

 M. Curie, Paris VI, and the National Center for the Exploitation of the 

 Oceans. 



