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[en] This report summarizes progress from September 1980 through July 1981 on a series of marine chemical and geochemical investigations involving both laboratory studies and field studies off the coast of Washington. Most of the field work has been on the Washington continental shelf, slope, and the submarine canyons indenting the shelf north of the Columbia River. The aim is to provide basic data required to characterize underlying chemical and physical processes and their rates which control the distributions, concentrations, and ultimate fate of some of the potentially hazardous agents associated with fossil fuel and/or nuclear power production or transportation. We are concentrating on several processes which we feel are of special importance in the sea, and developing methodologies and expertise to study them. Laboratory and field experiments and theories derived from them are being used iteratively to investigate: (1) vertical transfer of trace chemicals from surface seawaters to underlying waters and sediments; (2) processes which may transfer certain chemicals from sediments back into the overlying water column; (3) redox processes which besides changing valence states of certain chemicals may alter their precipitation/dissolution tendencies, their biological availability and/or toxicity; and (4) accumulation histories of potentially hazardous chemicals in sediments during the past 100 years

[en] Progress on a series of marine chemical and geochemical investigations involving both laboratory studies and field studies off the coast of Washington are summarized. Most of the field work has been on the Washington continental shelf, slope, and the submarine canyons indenting the shelf north of the Columbia River. The aim is to provide basic data required to characterize underlying chemical and physical processes and their rates which control the distributions, concentrations, and ultimate fate of some of the potentially hazardous agents associated with fossil fuel and nuclear power production or transportation. The studies have followed several main lines of investigation which are in various stages of completion: (1) field studies of the uptake and transport by zooplankton fecal pellets of ²¹⁰Po, ²¹⁰Pb, and other trace inorganic and organic constituents in a well-studied part of Puget Sound; (2) studies of the behavior of ²¹⁰Po and ²¹⁰Pb in sediments off the coast of Washington and the application of the ²¹⁰Pb determinations in sediment cores to determine sediment accumulation rates for the past 100 years, the depth of the surface mixed layer, and a mixing coefficient for the surface sediments; and (3) investigations of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons in some of the same samples of organisms and sediment cores whose accumulation histories for the past 100 years we have determined with the ²¹⁰Pb technique

[en] Results are reported from studies on the chemical, geological, and geochemical effects of the Columbia River in the northeast Pacific Ocean from May 1974 to May 1975. The studies followed three main lines of investigation: surface chemical studies of the scavenging of various species dissolved in sea water, especially lead-210, by well characterized natural particulates; studies of uptake and transfer of several isotopes, starting with polonium-210, by particularly well defined parts of the marine food web; and studies of the behavior of lead-210 and polonium-210 in sediments off the Washington coast and the application of lead-210 dating to determine sediment accumulation rates over the past 100 years in the coastal zone

[en] Progress is reported on a series of marine chemical and geochemical investigations involving both laboratory studies and field studies off the coast of Washington. Most of our field work the past few years has been on the Washington continental shelf, slope and the submarine canyons indenting the shelf north of the Columbia River. Our aim is to provide basic data required to characterize underlying chemical and physical processes and their rates which control the distributions, concentrations and ultimate fate of some of the potentially hazardous agents associated with fossil fuel and/or nuclear power production or transportation. The studies followed several main lines of investigation which are in various stages of completion: studies of the uptake and transfer of ²¹⁰Po, ²¹⁰Pb and related elements in the well defined surf zone ecosystem at Copalis Beach, Wa; field studies of the uptake and transport by zooplankton fecal pellets of ²¹⁰Po, ²¹⁰Pb and other trace inorganic and organic constituents in a well studied part of Puget Sound; studies of the behavior of ²¹⁰Po and ²¹⁰Pb in sediments off the coast of Washington and the application of the ²¹⁰Pb determinations in sediment cores to determine sediment accumulation rates for the past 100 years, the depth of the surface mixed layer, and a mixing coefficient for the surface sediments; and investigations of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons in some of the same samples of organisms and sediment cores whose accumulation histories for the past 100 years have been determined with the lead-210 technique

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[en] This report summarizes the past year's progress in our studies of the amounts, types, and probable origins of aliphatic, aromatic, S-, and N-containing hydrocarbons in sediments, organisms, and waters of Puget Sound and the Washington coast. We are trying to identify the relative importance of the various possible sources of these substances, the major pathways by which they are transferred through some parts of the marine food web, their rates of transfer, and their ultimate fates. We have found that changes in aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon compositions are evident in ²¹⁰Pb-dated sediment cores from central Puget Sound. These changes are due both to natural diagenetic processes and to low-level inputs of fossil fuels from a variety of sources. We have found measurable amounts of both S- and N-containing compounds in these Puget Sound sediments. Our studies of the role of zooplankton fecal pellets in the cycling of trace chemicals in the sea have shown that fecal pellets are an important vertical transport agent for hydrocarbons in the sea. We now have defined the natural variations in ¹⁴C and ¹³C/¹²C isotope ratios of the inorganic carbon in Puget Sound seawater. Carbon isotope abundances for organisms and sediments are also reported for selected sites

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