It was also natural that a cooperation between the Asko Laboratory 

 and the Swedish Water and Air Pollution Research Inst itute (IVL) would 

 follow the Tsesis grounding—the Asko Laboratory had the necessary 

 intimate ecological background knowledge of the area and IVL had the 

 needed experience in oil spill research. The physical proximity and 

 close personal connections between the two institutions helped even 

 more. IVL is an environmental research institute, financed jointly by 

 the Swedish government and industry. Its oil pollution unit is located 

 at Studsvik on the mainland, not far from Asko. Researchers at IVL have 

 conducted oil pollution research since 1971 and have investigated spills 

 worldwide as part of a special U.N.F.A.O. response team. On the morning 

 after the spill, when the Asko team arrived on scene to start the investi- 

 gation, Mats Notini from IVL was included and played an important role 

 in the planning and conduct of the research. Later, Dr. Olle Linden, 

 then on leave from IVL, functioned for two months as project leader for 

 the Asko Laboratory investigation. He continued to play an active and 

 helpful part in the investigation, even after his return to IVL, serving 

 as liaison officer between the Swedish investigators and NOAA. 



The unlikely participant in the Tsesis investigation was the United 

 States Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis- 

 tration (NOAA). Within this organization at the time of the Tsesis 

 spill, the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program 

 (OCSEAP) , funded by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) , maintained an 

 oil spill response project in Boulder, Colorado, under the management of 

 David Kennedy. The mission of this Spilled Oil Research (SOR) Team was 

 to take scientific advantage of oil spills having a significant research 

 potential. The main objectives of the team at the time of the Tsesis 

 incident were to study trajectories of oil spills (under the scientific 

 leadership of Dr. Jerry Gait) and chemical fates in the water column 

 (chief scientist, Dr. James Mattson) . In addition, Lt . John Kineman of 

 the NOAA Corps was given the task of investigating the "addition of a 

 biological component" to the response team, since the sponsoring organ- 

 ization (OCSEAP) was interested in encouraging research on the bio- 

 logical effects of acute oil spills. The ultimate purpose of the SOR 

 project within OCSEAP was to relate, by analogy, the study results from 



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