SCIENTISTS TURN SOUND INTO HUGE ENVIRONMENTAL LAB

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News Reporter

VALDEZ- Prince William Sound has become a huge laboratory, the spilled oil from the Exxon Valdez has become a long term research project, and the masses of dying wildlife have become guinea pigs.

A well organized army of hundreds of scientists at work here never planned it that way, but the scientists saw early on that this uniquely horrible spill would be a rare boon to their careers and the body of knowledge about oil in northern marine environments.

The middle of last week, while everyone else was still floundering, the scientific effort hit a long stride. Last weekend, scientists were discussing such ideas as setting aside one beach that would not be cleaned as a control that would show how well nature cleans itself without help.

Sunday morning leaders of various scientific groups met to decide which beaches should be cleaned up first, and when cleaning should stop. "When can they go home? When is a beach clean?" asked Jacqui Michel of a group of 50 scientists Saturday night.

Michel, who is a physicist, chemist and biologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, has helped organize the scientists' efforts from the beginning. She has long, brown hair, a broad, shy smile, and a seemingly endless supply of clean clothes the sign of a true professional among the grubby throngs of ill prepared reporters, cleanup workers, helicopter pilots and unidentifiable hangers on.

But it has been not only Michel's firm gentleness which has kept the scientists working the same path amid Valdez's jungle of confusion. The objectivity and openness of the scientific process has helped.

Exxon scientists and government scientists tease each other about "which side" they are on, and the three water column sampling boats on the Sound have both Exxon and Department of Environmental Conservation workers on board to make sure everyone trusts the data generated. But scientists have stayed friendly and organized.

"Most of them know each other," said John Murphy, who manages NOAA's growing data base. "They're aware of each other's work, and they use the same terms."

Not that the system has been perfect. The spill is like a laboratory, but it is a laboratory whose size, shape and location are impossible to pin down.

Friday, DEC workers published a map showing heavy concentrations of oil on Hinchinbrook Island, on the east side of the Sound a significant finding, since it would mean a threat to the migration routes of millions of ducks and geese traveling north from the Lower 48 and South America.

NOAA's map did not agree, and after a series of flights to check out the sighting, it turned out to be plankton and not oil at all.

"You can't control some of the parameters the way you can in the lab," said Claudia Slater, who is coordinating work for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

But as the confusion settles and workers begin getting eight hours of sleep a night, the Sound is coming in better focus.

"A lot of people are getting on the same flights, and starting to agree on what's oil and what's not oil, so maybe from now on our maps may not have the same disparities," Michel said.

How many birds live in the Sound is another matter of vigorous debate. John Lyman of Alaska Fish and Game estimated 100,000 to 200,000 birds are here, based on past work by the department. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completed a survey of every mile of coast line in the Sound Saturday, but have not transcribed their tape recorded bird count notes yet, said Everett Robinson Wilson. He guessed the state's figures are probably "within an order of magnitude."

Robinson Wilson said his agency's counts will continue, amassing a vast storehouse of data about birds and oil in the Sound. Later, as scientists write papers on the spill, that data will be their library.

Murphy, of NOAA, and the DEC are both keeping track of what samples and sightings are made where.

"The key to this is that you can come back and say, "Hey, while this guy was taking water samples, this guy was taking overhead photographs and this person was on the beach,' " he said. "Then you can put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Right now everyone is too busy collecting data to do that."

Dave Kennedy, a towering, bearded man whose face is a movie of his emotions about the spill, has led the NOAA coordination from the start. He is an advance man for science and has been to most of the world's famous oil spill disasters, including the break up of the Amoco Cadiz on the shores of France in 1978. In a few months, he will leave it to others to put together the puzzle pieces he has tried to collect.

"They're will be books of these kinds of notes and tapes that they're going to have to go over," Kennedy said. "So for the next year or two years or three years, you're going to see these guys staying back in their offices smoking their pipes and trying to go over their notes."

Two symposiums on the spill are already planned, both at the University of AlaskaFairbanks, scientists were told Saturday. One is in June, one in September. But many papers on the spill probably will not be published for years.

"In some disciplines, the effects of this are going to extend over the long term," said Slater. "We're going to have to do a multiyear effort."

Predictions about the slow breakdown of the oil in an article published a few years ago in the journal Marine Technology seems to assure job security for the scientists. The paper on the weathering of Prudhoe Bay crude in Alaska's cold saltwater by Jim Payne has gone from obscurity to best seller status among scientists here in the past week.

Payne placed the oil in a wave tank in sea water and let it wash around for 13 months. In 12 days, 15 to 28 percent evaporated. The rest of the oil was stable it is 36 percent wax and contains unusual concentrations of a substances which are very toxic and not very biodegradable, he wrote.

In 13 months of sloshing around in Payne's experiment, the oil that mixed in an emulsion with water just like the oil has done here did not break down.

"This oil is not dispersing," Michel said. "That was the bottom line we're talking about the stable oil water emulsion we have now is going to stay around for a long time."

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