extensive review of the existing social, economic, legal, and 

 environmental conditions of the Chesapeake Bay. The objective of 

 this review is the development of a plan to provide COE with the 

 basic information required to permit the proper management of the 

 Chesapeake Bay and its environs. To help achieve this objective, the 

 Consortium recently submitted a report on the ecological concepts 

 and environmental factors affecting the Chesapeake Bay. It included 

 summaries of the biology of the most significant Chesapeake Bay 

 organisms, a general ecological description of Chesapeake Bay 

 communities, and detailed descriptions of selected communities and 

 of pertinent water-quality standards and criteria. 



Instrumentation 



A MARAD program to develop shipboard satellite equipment for 

 general shipping use is moving into its operational phase. After 

 several years of testing prototype equipment, the L-band of NASA's 

 Applications Technology Satellite (ATS) 6, is now undergoing a 

 year-long test. Shipping companies in the North Atlantic will use 

 this system, together with a Communications Satellite Corp. 

 (COMSAT) satellite of the Maritime Satellite System (MARISAT) 

 in the Pacific, to establish technical procedures for wider use. 



NOAA's National Oceanographic Instrumentation Center (NOIC) 

 continued to provide the marine science community with test and 

 evaluation data on a variety of oceanographic and related marine 

 instruments. This past year also saw an increase in the use of NOIC's 

 three regional calibration centers. Approximately $250,000 were 

 spent to calibrate instruments at these centers in 1974, as opposed to 

 $165,000, the previous year. As a result, the data acquired with 

 instruments calibrated at the centers should have improved quality 

 for use in both national and international programs. 



NBS supported standardization and development of equipment for 

 use at sea. Among the developments initiated last year was an 

 incubation chamber for retrieving and studying marine micro- 

 organisms under conditions of in situ temperature and pressure at 

 maximum ocean depths. A sampler is being developed and built that 

 will be released from the ocean surface, will fall to the bottom of the 

 ocean at depths to 6 miles (ambient pressures to 1,000 atmospheres), 

 will retrieve a sample of fluid from a prescribed height above the 

 bottom, and will return while maintaining ambient pressure and 

 temperature. A transfer device is also being developed, that will 

 allow small samples to be withdrawn for microbiological analysis 

 without significant change in temperature and pressure. 



The growing number of vessel groundings, many of which have 

 involved major spills of oil or other dangerous cargo, has led 



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