SECTIONIll
FURTHER CONTRIBUTIONS ON GROSS BETA RADIOACTIVITY
OF FISHES AT RONGELAP ATOLL 1954 THROUGH MARCH 1958
This report extends the observations on Rongelap fishes beyond
that of Welander (UWFL-55),
up to the fallof
1958 and shows the
trends on a log-log, rather than a semi-log basis.
Methane-flow
counters were used as described in UWFL-43:7 except for the August
1958 samples (Eisler, Held, and Joyner, in preparation) which were
counted with flat, Anton 2-inch end-window tubes, using self-absorption
correction factors for K49,
Results, starting with the first fish collections at Rongelap Atoll
in 1954, appear in Table 6
and Figures 11 and 12,showing separately
liver, bone, and muscle of fishes at Kabelle and Rongelap Islands, and
in Rongelap lagoon, chiefly in the vicinity of Rongelap Island.
Data are
most plentiful for Kabelle Island where four full years are represented,
while at the other localities observations were not begun until nearly a
year after the detonation of March 1,
1954 at Bikini Atoll.
The rate of decline of beta radioactivity in fish at Kabelle Island
is shown in Figure 11 where the slopes of the dashed regression lines
for liver, bone, and muscle were, respectively,
-1.24.
For reef fish liver at Rongelap Island,
-1.75, -1.46, and
Figure 12 shows a