and the existing marine science program. Still, the U.S. scien- 

 tists, who responded for limited objectives only, re-learned the 

 importance of precise and comprehensive pre-planning of experiments. 

 Procedures that are developed enroute or on-scene are likely to be 

 incompletely thought out. Yet, it has been the tendency of re- 

 sponse programs to fail to adequately emphasize the necessary 

 research and development of experiment designs and field procedures. 

 For example, the possibility of problems in using plastic bag 

 samplers (chapter 5) has been hypothesized for some time; yet, the 

 procedural limitations of this sampling technique were not defined 

 until after the loss of important data and considerable expense. 

 Quick scientific response is a valid strategy, but only proven 

 techniques and procedures should be used. Their development and 

 documentation must be adequately supported in advance and strictly 

 adhered to in the field. 



Further development is needed for sampling techniques . The largest 

 gap in the field capability at the Tsesis site (and at other recent 

 oil spills) was the lack of an adequate sea water sampler for low 

 level hydrocarbon analysis. The best results were obtained by 

 Scuba, using glass containers (protected during surface entry); but 

 this procedure is not usually practicable and is often dangerous 

 during the early stages of the spill when sampling is most impor- 

 tant . 



Furthermore, the Tsesis investigation revealed that large 

 quantities of oil can be sedimented through the water column. The 

 use of sediment traps are therefore recommended in future studies 

 (see Section 3.3.1). However, before this can be employed on a 

 matter of course basis at oil spill studies, some further careful 

 study should go into trap design and a determination made of trap- 

 ping efficiency—especially the possibility of overtrapping, which 

 could lead to erroneous balance calculations. 



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