Placed under restricted availability on 9 March. On 22 March, the Patapsco crewmen and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard personnel started to decontaminate the ship. OPERATIONS AFLOAT By 4 March, most of the fleet units were again in Bikini Lagoon. The major units had withdrawn to Enewetak to offload excess TG 7.1 and 7.5 Personnel on 1 March and prepare for the BRAVO follow-on operations. The land areas of Bikini, as well as the lagoon surface, had received a heavy fallout of the contaminated coral particles from the BRAVO shot. Readings in tenths of roentgens per hour on Eneu in the southeast of the atoll, and in tens of roentgens per hour on Lomilik in the north, were made 10 days after BRAVO. This meant that personnel could go ashore only for short periods of time, but even then their cumulative doses built up. The situation aboard ships in the lagoon was such that long-term tenancy was possible. The fallout particles sank to the bottom and the over- lying water shielded the ships from the particles' radioactivity. The land area in the southern string of islands had radiologically decayed sufficiently by this time that work crews could go ashore and stay long enough to clear the airstrip joining Aerokoj and Aerokojlol. This restored better air transportation between Bikini and Enewetak, which had been reduced to flying boat service in the interim. Task force personnel lived aboard the major ships at Bikini and commuted via small boat or helicopter if work was required ashore. Careful control of exposure was required to avoid buildup over the Maximum Fermissible Exposure. OFFSITE OPERATIONS BRAVO affected offsite operations. Much effort was spent in resurvey- ing the atolls that were evacuated immediately following the test. The ob- ject was to better establish the doses the inhabitants received and to do some preliminary research on absorption of radioactive materials by flora 232