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Beginning the Search for Offshore Oil Seeps Near Point Conception, California
The field party visited three beaches: Boathouse and Jalama within the study area, and Casmalia north of the study area. Photograph quadrats were established at rocky intertidal areas at Boathouse and Jalama Beaches for repeated sampling of tarballs at three-month intervals during the next three years. On the sandy beaches at Boathouse and Jalama, transects were run parallel and perpendicular to the shoreline; 108 tarballs were recovered from these transects. Casmalia Beach was very clean; only seven tarballs were observed. Seventeen tarballs were selected from all the beaches for geochemical analyses. Weight of the 17 tarballs was approximately half a kilogram; another three kilograms of tar were removed from the beaches and discarded. Thirteen samples of production oil were obtained (using helicopter support) from Hidalgo, Hermosa, and Harvest, three oil-production platforms in the offshore portion of the study area. This initial sampling effort provides material to develop geochemical criteria for differentiating produced crude oil from crude oil released from natural seepage, and to assess the sources of tarballs on the California coast.
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![]() in this issue:
California Offshore Oil Seeps
MRIB to Host Digital Library of Gulf of Maine Gulf of Mexico Integrated Science
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