Unreasonable degradation of the marine environment--What is it?

A strategy is presented for quantifying the extent of pollutant degradation in coastal environments and ecosystems. Twelve indices are recommended as efficient and geographically comparable ways to characterize pollutant degradation, given adequate interpretation of the index values. The indices are also recommended as scales of degradation along which "serious" or "unreasonable" degradation, in a social or legal sense, can be defined by legislative, regulatory and judicial processes.