Vol. 53 - Alaska Resources Library and Information Services

were covered by lower concentrations (Curl and Manen 1982).
After larger
spills of 500,000 to one million barrels, several thousand km 2 of
benthos could be covered by 5-10 g oil/m2; a level we previously suggested
might be toxic to crustacean embryos during chronic exposures.
Extensive
coverage would be most likely and most critical nearshore in shallow
water. The same magnitude of scaling up could be applied to the NAS
as well, which was considered only in terms of very small, 10,000 barrel
(bbl), spills (Armstrong et al. 1983), which might cover an 8 x 20 km
area with toxic oil concentrations. A large spill of 100,000-500,000
bbl north of Unimak Island, for instance, could be transported several
hundred kilometers in nearshore currents to Cape Seniavin and also mixed
to the benthos in these shallow waters.
8.5 Predictions of Oil Impact on Decapod Larvae
Rather than work from a specific oil scenario in this section and
ask if larvae would be impacted, each major decapod group will be
discussed from the vantage of how severe an oil spill must be to significantly
impact a year-class.
Figure 8.2 shows proposed lease sale areas
of the St. George Basin and North Aleutian Shelf, and serves as reference
to the following discussions.
8.5.1 Direction of Oil Transport
Physical oceanogrpahy and its relation to transport and distribution
of oil in the water column was reviewed by Schumacher (1982) as
part of the St. George Basin Synthesis meeting.
Results of computer
simulations by Leendertse and Liu (1981) were used to formulate scenarios
of oil spills and direction of surface trajectories (Figs. 8.3 and
818