accumulated by fish from waters contaminated by nuclear detonations
(Lowman,
1960).
Foster and Judkins
(1960)
reported
that although zine-65 is of comparatively low abundance among
the radionuclides in the effluent at the site of discharge of
low-level wastes from the Hanford reactors into the Columbia
River,
it is one of the principal contributors to radioactiv-
ity in locally produced food and is one of the four nuclides
Still detectable at the mouth of the river.
Seymour
(1961),
reported that zinc-65 was concentrated ina variety of marine
organisms along that part of the Pacific Coast adjacent to
the mouth of the Columbia River.
The radioactive contamination of Rongelap Atoll in the
Marshall Islands
(Fig.
1) by the series of nuclear tests at
Bikini in the spring of 1954 and the subsequent periodic sur-
veys of the residual radioactivity in the area,
conducted by
the Laboratory of Radiation Biology of the University of
Washington
(formerly the Applied Fisheries Laboratory),
pro-
vided a unique opportunity to study an environment contaminated with radioactivity at essentially but one point in time.
su. sequent recontamination from the 1956 and 1958 tests was
small compared to that of 1954
For
this
thesis,
(Bonham,
1959).
an investigation was made of the fate
of zine-65 introduced into the lagoon of Rongelap Atoll from
/@