Placed under restricted availability on 9 March. On 22 March, the tapsco crewmen and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard personnel started to decontahhiinate 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 OPERATIONS AFLOAT By 4 March, most of the fleet units were again in Bikini Lagoon.]| The major units had withdrawn to Enewetak to offload excess TG 7.1 and 745 personnel on 1 March and prepare for the BRAVO follow-on operations. The land areas of Bikini, as well as the lagoon surface, had recqived a heavy fallout of the contaminated coral particles from the BRAVO sHlot. Readings in tenths of roentgens per hour on Eneu in the southeast of jthe atoll, and in tens of roentgens per hour on Lomilik in the north, wegle made 10 days after BRAVO. This meant that personnel could go ashore [only for short periods of time, but even then their cumulative doses builf up. The situation aboard ships in the lagoon was such that long-term ften- ancy was possible. The fallout particles sank to the bottom and the Pver- lying water shielded the ships from the particles' radioactivity. The land area in the southern string of islands had radiological de- cayed sufficiently by this time that work crews could go ashore and skay 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 cpm- muted via small boat or helicopter if work was required ashore. Careful control of exposure was required to avoid buildup over the Maximum Pefmissible Exposure. OFFSITE OPERATIONS BRAVO affected offsite operations. Much effort was spent in resugvey- ing the atolls that were evacuated immediately following the test. Tile ob- ject was to better establish the doses the inhabitants received and t@ do some preliminary research on absorption of radioactive materials by fJora 232