Ocean-dumping research and monitoring: Strategies and tools

Ocean-dumping studies are designed to establish critical indexes of environmental quality to assess the impacts of ocean dumping. Strategies emphasized are: 1) source function characterization including determinations of toxicities of original wastes, 2) environmental characterization, 3) waste dispersion studies in the laboratory and at sea, and 4) waste biota interaction studies, both in the short term, within a life cycle of organisms affected, and in the long term, over many life cycles. Present tools include: 1) quantitative mapping of pollutant distribution by aerial remote sensing and moored and drifting arrays, 2) realtime tracking of waste dispersion in the ocean by 20- and 200-kHz acoustic records, 3) continuous multidepth water sampling to obtain sea truth, 4) in situ bioassay devices, and 5) mathematical dispersion models, some of which are similar to atmospheric chimney plume dispersion models.