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On may 14, 1958, a second fallout was detected in the area in which
the ship was operating.

This contamination may have resulted from the

Butternut, Fir, or Koa devices which were detonated one to to two days

earlier.

General contamination of the ship at a level of 5 to 10 mr/hr

raised the background in the counting room to a very high level (445, 000

c/m total gamma, 0.02-2 MEV).

This level decreased to 60,000 c/m

just prior to the Wahoo detonation on May 16, 1958.
The first post- Wahoo plankton sample, P-13, was taken at the end
of the initial radiation survey (1609 hours) at a depth of 9 to 15 meters
in an area with a gamma radiation level of 10 mr/hr, four miles west
of target zero.

The amount of radioactivity was high (32, 000, 000 d/m/g

dry) but not as high as that found in sample P-14 taken that evening
(1907 hours) at a position less than three miles to the southeast.

These

differences in amounts of radioactivity may reflect the variation in the
radioactivity of samples taken in the target area or mayindicate that
maximum uptake of radioactivity by the plankton did not occur until
this time.

The location of the plankton sampling stations and the radio-

activity of the samples collected after Wahoo are shown in Figures 1,
5, and 6.

The results of ion-exchange separations of the radionuclides of
some of the plankton samples and analysis of the fractions by gamma
spectrometry are given in Table 3.

The percentages of total activity

Select target paragraph3