Vol. 53 - Alaska Resources Library and Information Services

and oil transport developed for the region, discussing oil toxicity to
crustacean larvae, highlighting biological misconceptions of past models
and suggesting modifications based on the present study, and finally
predicting oil impact on larvae over the St. George Basin and nearshore
along the North Aleutian Shelf.
8.1 A Review of Water and Oil Transport Models
Attempts to predict oil impacts in the southeastern Bering Sea
should be based on best possible information available regarding physical
and biological processes of the system, and specific life-history
and ecological information for the principal species of interest.
It is
often necessary to establish rather tenuous links between species biology
and assumptions regarding processes that influence populations
because data are sketchy or non-existent for the system in question, and
must therefore come from oil studies on different species or in different
oceans.
Two models of physical transport processes, water movements, and
biological interactions and responses to oil in the Bering Sea have been
constructed by Leendertse and Liu (1981) and Sonntag et al. (1980), and
several models of water transport and circulation based on net current
directions and velocity have been developed by Hebard (1959) and Kinder
and Schumacher (1981), and on methane profiles by Cline et al. (1981).
Water movement and resultant larval transport are important considerations
in predictions of oil impact because larvae or oil may be moved
toward or away from each other depending on area and timing of a spill,
or both may be entrained together for days to weeks in a water mass
798