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Ballast water treatment systems must be stringently tested relative to the Coast Guard's proposed ballast water discharge standard for live organisms prior to Coast Guard approval for routine shipboard use. Analysis for live organisms in sparsely populated samples is time limited and labor intensive. Skilled staff must use a microscope to observe, count, and verify the viability of live organisms greater than or equal to 10 microns and less than 50 microns in minimum dimension. This program built upon previous work performed by the Naval Research Laboratory to develop data management, data archive, and data analysis protocols for counting and determining the viability of organisms greater than or equal to 50 urn in minimum dimension. Results documented in this report clearly demonstrate the protocols are appropriate for organisms in the smaller size class, and they provide a high degree of confidence that automated methods can be further developed to process samples during production testing to determine the efficacy of ballast water management systems. The findings in this report are the result of initial research into the potential to automate protist analyses and provide the most current information available at the conclusion of this initial research effort. Additional automation research efforts are ongoing and may affect details reported herein., Prepared in collaboration with U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center, New London, CT. Report No. CG-D-02-11.

Current methods for locating and recovering submerged oil spills are inadequate. Detection methods are often improvised on-scene, and recovery techniques are labor intensive and not always successful. The U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center has embarked on a multi-year project to develop a complete approach for dealing with spills of submerged oils. This report describes the assessment of detection techniques using sonar, laser fluorometry, real-time mass spectrometry, and in-situ fluorometry to locate oil sitting on the sea floor. Evaluation of four proof-of-concept devices was conducted at the Oil and Hazardous Material Simulated Environmental Test Tank (OHMSETT), now called The National Oil Spill Response Test Facility, in Leonardo, NJ, between November 2007 and February 2008. Further testing of two of these prototype devices, plus three additional detection systems, was conducted at OHMSETT in January 2009. This report contains the results of these tests and recommendations for Federal On-scene Coordinators when responding to spills of heavy oil (contained in Appendix E)., Prepared in collaboration with Potomac Management Group, Inc., McLean, VA. The original document contains color images.