EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 



The tanker Avgo Merchant carrying 7,700,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil 

 went aground on Fishing Rip, 29 nautical miles southeast of Nantucket Island, 

 Massachusetts, at 0600 EST on December 15, 1976. Despite attempts to refloat 

 the tanker, it began to leak oil and, at 0835 on December 21, broke in half 

 after a battering by gale force winds. By the next day, after the ship had 

 broken again, most of the oil it carried was drifting at the mercy of winds 

 and currents. The bow section, which still had some buoyancy and was thought 

 to contain some remaining cargo, started drifting away from the other two 

 pieces of wreckage. Despite attempts by the U.S. Coast Guard to remove the 

 buoyancy by holing the floatation compartments on December 31, the bow section 

 drifted southeast into deeper water under the influence of the severe currents 

 in the area. On February 8, 1977, the bow section was relocated 1 mile to the 

 southeast and was found to be empty of oil. What started as another tanker 

 going aground ended up as one of the largest oil spills in U.S. history. 



The grounding of the Argo Merchant triggered intense scientific activity 

 between December 15, 1976, and February 12, 1977, aimed at describing the 

 movement and fate of the oil released by the tanker as a first step in the 

 long process of assessing the ecological effects of the spill. This activity 

 was centered on the U.S. Coast Guard's operations at its Cape Cod Air Station, 

 and was coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmos- 

 pheric Administration (NCAA) , and academic scientists from the oceanographic 

 research institutions in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Participating 

 agencies, in addition to the U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA, included Alaska 

 Department of Environmental Conservation; U.S. Navy, including the Naval Under- 

 water Systems Center, Department of Defense; Bureau of Land Management and the 

 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) , Department of the Interior; Environmental 

 Protection Agency; Energy Research and Development Administration; Manomet 

 Bird Observatory; Marine Biological Laboratory; Massachusetts Division of 

 Fisheries and Wildlife; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Universi- 

 ties of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Southern California; and Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution. 



During the week after the grounding, both NOAA and Woods Hole Oceanographic 

 Institution (WHOI) , recalled research vessels .from scheduled operations to 

 undertake special cruises designed to determine the fate of the oil and to 

 make the first assessments of the impact of the spilled oil on the ecology of 

 the lucrative fishing grounds. Six biology stations were occupied by scien- 

 tists from NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on the DeloLJare II 

 and three stations were occupied by WHOI and NOAA scientists on the Oceanus to 

 assess how much oil had entered the water column and sediments. In the weeks 

 that followed, over 200 water and sediment samples were acquired during 

 cruises on U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, WHOI, USGS, and University of Rhode Island 

 vessels. Forty-three additional biology stations, at which fish and shellfish 

 samples were obtained, were occupied during a second NMFS cruise . The culmina- 

 tion of the initial field activities was a benthic survey that encompassed the 

 entire Continental Shelf bottom over which the Argo Merchant oil had passed. 

 This bottom survey was completed in two cruises by oceanographers from the 

 University of Rhode Island (URI) , NOAA, and the Coast Guard on URI's 

 R/V Endeavor, the second cruise ending on February 12, 1977. Another cruise 



ill 



