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Vol. 53 - Alaska Resources Library and Information Services

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Long-term, sublethal effects may also not pose a great threat except in<br />

the immediate vicinity of a spill. Experiments conducted in 1982-1983<br />

at the Auke Bay NMFS lab studied the survival <strong>and</strong> growth of young<br />

juvenile king crab fed oiled food (mussels) or kept on oiled sediment.<br />

In neither experiment did juveniles seem to be adversely affected based<br />

on preliminary analysis of data (J. Garrett, S.D. Rice, C. Broderson,<br />

NMFS Auke Bay Lab, pers. communication). In another experiment designed<br />

to study sublethal effects of oil in water (WSF) to crab, energetic<br />

criteria were used to compare relative scopes for growth (Warren 1971)<br />

between treatments. At high but sublethal WSF consentrations, juvenile<br />

crab had reduced feeding rates <strong>and</strong> therefore consumed less (T. Shirley,<br />

Univ. <strong>Alaska</strong> Juneau, pers. communication). This situation, if prolonged,<br />

would inhibit growth <strong>and</strong> survival, but the former results<br />

indicate that juvenile crab may be fairly resistant to oil exposure via<br />

food <strong>and</strong> sediments.<br />

Although longevity of oil in sediments is great, it is not known whether<br />

there is a constant leaching of the WSF in toxic quantities into overlying<br />

water. Given a tremendous capacity by the system to dilute<br />

toxicants emanating from a point-source, it seems unlikely that oil at<br />

toxic levels would chronically affect a benthic community much beyond<br />

the confines of the immediate polluted area. An estimate of adverse<br />

effect might be reduced to a calculation of the proportion of habitat<br />

polluted relative to the total occupied by the species during any<br />

life-history stanza.<br />

416

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