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documents on the design of compliance and regional monitoring programs for use by its regional offices, state 

 regulatory agencies, and permittees. NOAA and EPA should promote the development of new techniques and 

 technical protocols for use in regional and national monitoring programs to ensure compatibility and 

 comparability of data. 



Although these findings and recommendations are of a general nature and do not include specific guidance for 

 the design of environmental monitoring of offshore oil and gas development activities in the Gulf of Mexico, the 

 National Research Council (NRC) report gives many examples of the pitfalls confronting effective monitoring 

 and contains step-by-step conceptual guidance for program design which should be useful in the design of any 

 monitoring program. 



Turning to monitoring the effects of drilling and production activities, it is helpful to consult the 

 recommendations of a report on the long-term environmental effects of offshore oil and gas development which 

 was assembled for the Federal Interagency Committee on Ocean Pollution Research, Development and 

 Monitoring (COPRDM) (Boesch and Rabalais 1987). That report recommended parallel studies in historically 

 developed and newly developing areas to resolve potential long-term effects of operational discharges from 

 offshore oil and gas development drilling and production on the benthos. The developed area recommended for 

 investigation is an outer shelf (> 60 m) environment off southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas (Eugene 

 Island to High Island South Additions) which is depositional and heavily developed but removed from the 

 potentially confounding influence of the Mississippi River. The COPRDM report recommended the following 

 study approaches: 



measure chemical tracers of drilling discharges in sediments (barium, chromium, lignosulfonate, medium 

 weight aromatic hydrocarbons); 



• assess sedimentologic and geochemical dynamics (sediment texture, erosion and deposition, exchanges 

 with water column); 



• determine bioavailability over time from sediments of potentially toxic components of drilling fluids to 

 various trophic groups of benthos; 



measure biological effects at three levels: 



individual: induction of enzyme systems, biochemical and physiological stress indices; 

 population: age and size structure, reproduction and recruitment, microbes; 

 community: biological interactions resulting from population alterations. 



The implementation of monitoring programs for the Gulf of Mexico within the same time frame of physical 

 oceanography and ecosystem studies offers a rare opportunity of synergistic integration of these studies. Physical 

 oceanographic studies could provide information very useful in interpretation of monitoring results, such as the 

 dispersal of contaminants in the water column, sediment (and contaminant) resuspension and transport, vertical 

 water mass structure and dynamics, and definition of the regional transport field and its response to extreme 

 events. Properly designed, ecosystem studies could also contribute significantly by addressing such questions as: 



• What is the long-term fate of contaminants released by operations or accidents? How do these compare 

 with other sources of these materials? What are the direct biological effects of these contaminants? 



• How do dominant natural processes, such as hypoxia, land run off, slope water intrusions and storms, 

 affect the ecosystem in ways which exacerbate, moderate or confound the detection of effects of oil and 

 gas activities? 



• What are the broader implications to the ecosystem, its health, and productivity, of extensive localized 

 alterations in the environment resulting from OCS oil and gas development, e.g., seabed contamination 

 or disturbance and the physical presence of oil and gas structures? 



