CHAPTER 5: NOAA ACUTE PHASE EXPERIMENTS ON PELAGIC AND SURFACE OIL 

 (John Kineman, 5.1, 5.3-5.5; Robert C. Clark, Jr., 5.2) 



The major events leading to the NOAA/OCSEAP Spilled Oil Research 

 (SOR) Team response to the Tsesis incident have been mentioned in the 

 Executive Summary. The present section describes the short-term phase 

 activities of the U.S. team. 



5.1 Experiment Design 



Objectives were limited to investigating the accommodation of oil 

 in the water column below a contained oil slick, and subsequent down- 

 stream decay. It was envisioned that this would require locating a 

 significant quantity of pooled (or boomed) oil, then sampling the oil 

 and the water at various depths and times to determine accommodation and 

 composition over time. 



Secondly, to determine downstream decay, the plan called for sam- 

 pling at various depths in the water column, while following a parcel of 

 water as a "Lagrangian" drift study. The original plan also called for 

 determining currents, using sampling over a period of 8-12 hours (for 

 each experiment) and extracting water samples in the field. 



After arrival on-scene, and during the two days in the field, 

 modifications were made to the original experiment design to adapt to 

 existing conditions. The chemistry program that was carried out is 

 outlined below: 



A. Oil chemistry studies 



(1) Surface oil samples were taken for: 



a. estimation of the degree of emulsif ication 



b. estimation of the density of the free oil 



c. estimation of the asphaltic content based on the hexane 

 insoluble residue 



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