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on July 18,
1957, a collection was made in the channel off the northwest
end of Kabelle Island, Rongelap Atoll.
All fish were obtained in water
15 feet or less in depth, and the collections were made in localities al-
most identical to those of the 1954, 1955 and 1956 surveys.
date of collection,
Locality,
common names, genera, species and number of
specimens for the 1956 and 1957 collections are listed in the
appendix.
The fish were placed on ice in insulated containers within two hours
of capture and transported to the Eniwetok Marine Biological Laboratory
where they were frozen.
There the fish were identified and dissected,
except in the case of fish collected in 1956 when the frozen fish were
shipped to the base Laboratory at the University of Washington for dissection and subsequent radiological analysis.
were muscle, bone,
Tissues used for analysis
liver and stomach contents or viscera.
Specimens
which were too small to dissect were processed as whole fish.
Partly because of the omnivorous food habits of the Marshallese
natives and partly because of variations in the samples, it is advisable
to analyze many specimens of a variety of species to obtain reliable estimates of levels of radioactivity (Welander, 1957).
Consequently, two-
gram samples of muscle tissue were taken from each fish and the
aggregate was homogenized in a Waring Blendor.
Plates were made of
aliquots of this homogenate and the remainder dried for radiochemical
DOE ARCHIY:
analysis. All samples were dried at 100° C and the plated samples as e
at temperatures up to 540° C, cooled, slurried, dried
and
counted in