Digital Extra

The ecology will recover, said Kenneth Sherman, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's laboratory in Narragansett. "The disaster is essentially economic."

On a Davisville dock, Sherman hung onto his hat and leaned into a squall as he waited for the NOAA research vessel Albatross to land its cargo of samples from the cruise. For two days the ship's skipper, Cmdr. Gary Bulmer of Narragansett, had guided the 187-foot vessel through waters reaching from just south of Southwest Ledge off Block Island to just off the beach where the oil had leaked out of the grounded barge.

Aboard the ship worked 14 scientists -- including some who had studied the groundings of the Argo Merchant and the World Prodigy -- from federal agencies, the University of Rhode Island and the state Division of Fish and Wildlife. They were oceanographers, chemists and biologists with a spectrum of specialties.

They had collected animals ranging from microscopic plankton to lobsters as well as flounder, skate and herring. They gathered water samples from the surface and just above the bottom and mud from the bottom itself. They measured temperature, salinity, chlorophyll and more.

They said they found "no significant mortality."

In layman's terms, they found life.

Among the animals they caught were 34 lobsters, all adults, and apparently well: The animals were frozen and will be analyzed, according to Frank Almeida, chief scientist aboard the ship, based in Woods Hole, Mass.

Last weekend's kill of clams, lobsters and other crustaceans may have been as dramatic as it was, they said, because of a combination of factors including the rough weather, which flushed the animals out of their coverts.

Most of the lobsters that washed up onto the beach were juveniles and many of them were battered, according to Scott Olszewski, the biologist representing Rhode Island's fish and wildlife agency on the cruise. The kill seems to have been limited to the immediate area of the spill, he said, but there is no way to determine how it will affect the future of the state's overall lobster fishery.

State wildlife biologists believe about 200 injured birds will be recovered from the spill, and despite the efforts of dozens of wildlife rehabilitators, many of the birds will die, predicted Dr. Susan Littlefield, the state veterinarian.

Nonetheless, the spill's effect on sea birds could have been worse. Yesterday morning, Michael Lapisky, deputy chief of the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, counted 17,000 eiders wintering on waters east of the spill. "If the oil had hit just 10 percent of them, we would have been in real trouble," he said.

On the ocean, the spill's poisonous effects probably will disappear within two weeks, said NOAA's Sherman, one of the scientists who studied the groundings of the Argo Merchant on Nantucket Shoals in September 1960 and the World Prodigy off Brenton Reef in June 1989.

Though the oil that leaked from the Argo Merchant was much heavier than the oil spilled last weekend, it eventually dissipated and it had no significant long-term effect on offshore fisheries.

The World Prodigy's spill could have been more serious than it turned out to be because of the timing: There was a greater variety of animals in the water in June and many of them were spawning. That spill dissipated, too, and the waters recovered.

In Rhode Island, winter flounder are about to spawn in the state's salt ponds, and their eggs could be affected if the oil on the bottom stays longer than expected in depressions in the mud. The flounder population is suffering because of overfishing, Sherman said, and the spill might slow the flatfish's recovery.

Researchers will continue to study the spill's long-range effects on the environment, said the scientists aboard the Albatross, who were scheduled to collect more samples today.

"The most immediate area of concern," said NOAA's Sherman, "is the fisheries. Over the long term, the area will recover. It will recover in the open water faster than in the salt ponds. . . .

"The disaster is essentially economic, and it's very severe, particularly to those people who depend on that fairly restricted area for their livelihood."