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from the fresh or frozen specimens, at the Eniwetok Marine

Biological Laboratory.

The tissues were weighed at the time of

dissection and then dried.

The packaged dried samples,

together

with data cards, were sent by air mail to the Applied Fisheries
Leboratory, University of Washington, for further processing.
There the dried samples were ashed at temperatures up to
550°C on stainless steel counting plates and then counted in an
internal gas-flow counting chamber.

The counts per plate were

converted to disintegrations per minute per gram (d/m/g) of wet
tissue, as of the date of collection, by correcting for sample
weight, geometry, backscatter,

decay.

self-absorption, coincidence and

(See W?-616 (UWPL-33) for a more complete discussion of

these procedures. )
The decay corrections for all tissues except carapace were
based on the decay rate of a soil sample collected at Belle
Island the day after the Nectar shot.

Decay corrections for the

carapace were based on the decay rate of 879% y9° and sr89 which
constituted virtually 100 per cent of its activity at the time
the chemical determinations were made.

factors ranged from 1.09 to 12.7.

The decay correction

DOE ARCHIVES

The variation in amount of radioactivity for each tissue at
each collection date, although great,

(Appendix Table 1) was not

great enough to obscure general trends in changes of radioactivity with time or differences in levels of radioactivity

between tissues.
The term "activity" as used here means radioactivity per
unit weight.

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