Materials suitable for this treatment are seawater, sedi- ment, suspended particulate matter and biota, together with comments upon variability with position, depth or distance in a system.

Papers which conform to this format will be given favourable consideration for publication. Papers dealing with the same topics but in greater depth will be considered by normal procedures. A prime requirement in marine environmental research is a need to have available data

Marine Pollution Bulletin

which adequately describe the concentration and distribu- tion of elements and compounds for all parts of the world. The Marine Pollution Bulletin receives numerous communi- cations from remote areas which usually are not the subject of intense study, but, as a result of programmes of pollution surveillance, which are underway in most countries, data are now becoming available.

E. L H A M I L T O N

UK Nuclear Plant 'World's Heaviest Polluter' The United Kingdom Energy Authority's nuclear plant at Windscale, on the Cumbrian coast, is the most heavily polluting of all the world's nuclear establishments, the Political Ecology Research Group (PERG) has claimed. At a press conference to launch its latest report, PERG said the plutonium distributed in the Cumbrian coastal strip was equal to that deposited in radioactive fall-out from atmospheric nuclear tests.

Labour MP Mr Albert Booth alleged that the UK "is a major polluter of the marine environment and accounts for 95% of all radioactivity dumped in the sea". He added that Windscale was discharging a million times as much plutonium as any comparable plant.

The report, commissioned by the Greenpeace Conserva- tion group and written by biologist Peter Taylor and the Group's director, said that highly toxic plutonium could be breathed in from sea-spray in the Windscale area.

Marshland Pollution Clean-up Impasse Oil-spill clean-up operations in Wilmington, South Carolina, were called off after scientists became concerned that the mechanical methods being used would damage vital marsh feeding and nesting areas more severely than the oil itself.

More than 175 000 gallons of heavy fuel oil spilled from an unknown source, impacting about 21 km of marshland along the Cape Fear River downstream from Wilmington. Samples of oil were taken from ships that could have been responsible but none were found to match those in the river.

Scientists from the Research Planning Institute in Columbia were worried that the oil might threaten several endangered species of alligators and pelicans near the spill site. However, it did not reach the pelicans' nesting area. Some pelican eggs were oiled indirectly when oiled adult birds returned to their nests. The spill's impact on the pelican eggs, as well as on the egrets, bitterns, and herons that nest in the marsh and on food sources for the endangered alligators, has yet to be determined.

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Name Change for IMCO The Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organiza- tion (IMCO) has now officially changed its name to the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The name change results from the entry into force of amendments adopted in 1975 to the 1948 convention which established it. With it comes an expansion in the scope of its objectives to include " the prevention and control of marine pollution from ships" and "legal matters related to the purposes set out" in Article 1 of the 1948 convention. The amendments also formalize the status of the organization's Legal Committee and Marine Environment Protection Committee.

Meanwhile, the impact of the organization's regulations on the tanker industry is discussed in a paper published recently by the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (INTERTANKO) in Oslo, Norway. The paper concludes that the decrease in worldwide oil demand and the resulting recession in the tanker industry may force owners to sell their vessels rather than upgrade them to meet the new structural and operating standards. It says that inert gas systems (IGS) and crude oil washing systems (COW) required by the 1974 International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea and the 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships "actually will improve slightly the carrying capacity" of tankers but will require capital investment at a time of decreased trade. Tanker owners not able to upgrade their vessels have three options, says the paper. They can operate them from countries which have not yet adopted or enforced the IMCO conventions, convert them to floating oil or coal storage vessels or scrap them.

The paper is available from INTERTANKO, PO Box 1452 Vika, Oslo 1, Norway.

Amoco Cadiz Court Action Resumes The case against the owners of the Amoco Cadiz, which grounded off Portsall in France spilling 68 million gallons of crude oil, has resumed in the US district court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The Liberian-registered tanker's owners Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) and its affiliates, Amoco Transport Co. and Amoco International Oil Co., face claims from the French government, a group of communal governments, business

Volume 13/Number 7/July 1982

"Land ahoyV'

interests and environmental groups in the French department of C6te du Nord and Finist&e. They allege that Amoco performed faulty maintenance on the steering gear of the tanker and failed to train the crew adequately.

Standard Oil, meanwhile, maintain that the French authorities knew of the tanker's predicament throughout the day of the grounding but took no action to prevent it and once the accident had happened did not act properly to limit the extent of the pollution.

Attorneys for the oil companies have filed a motion asking the court to sanction the French government for refusing to release testimony and documents compiled by a French commission which investigated the Amoco Cadiz grounding. They claim that both contain criticism of the French government's handling of the incident and back up their claim. Instead they have been allowed by the court to enter as evidence passages taken from the two subsequent reports published by the commission.

Oil Company Accused of Pollution Violations A Canadian oil company faces fines of up to $33 000 for misreporting a 200 000 gallon spill in Baie Verte, Newfoundland. The spill came from a ruptured pipeline at the Irving Oil Company's storage terminal which connected the pier where tankers unload to a storage tank.

The company initially reported a spill of 480 gallons and the site was not inspected by the Canadian Environmental Protection Service (EPS) until a month later because the incident had been reported as a minor spillage. Also much of the oil had flowed under the ice and what lay on top was covered by heavy snow.

EPS eventually visited the site after reports from fishermen that oil had appeared in the Bale Verte harbour. It began supervising the clean-up operation after the company raised its spill estimate to 3840 gallons. Later, suspecting that Irving was witholding an accurate estimate of the amount spilled, it seized the company's records, which revealed the real amount and that the company was aware of the extent two days after the incident.

The company now faces four charges brought by federal agencies of violating provincial pollution regulations, and may also face further fines from the federal government.

The clean-up has been hampered by ice in the harbour, some of which, impacted with oil, has now drifted out to sea. So far around 54 000 gallons of the spilled oil has been recovered.

Surprise Findings from Ixtoc Spill Study A study into the effects of the 1979 Ixtoc I well blow-out and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has concluded that it cannot be definitely identified as the cause of decreases in populations of offshore sediment-dwelling organisms in the area.

The study was carried out by Energy Resources Co. (ERCO) of Cambridge, Massachusetts, under contract to the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM). ERCO collected sediment samples in December 1980 from offshore sites at 3 to 60 m depths. The sites had been sampled by the Regional Response Team (RRT) in November 1979 during the spill and ERCO analysed the two sets of samples for oil content, comparing it to extensive baseline data from a South Texas Outer Conti-

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