PURPOSE AND SCOPE The Oil Spill Studies. Strategies and Techniques Workshop was convened to organize a summary of current techniques and suggest sampling strategies to study the effects of oil spills on marine and estuarine biota. While it is not intended to be a comprehensive methodology text@ it is designed to provide the marine scientist with the collective field and analytical experience of researchers who participated in this effort. This workshop was designed to address massive petroleum releases to the marine environment@ and was not intended to focus on continual@ chronic spillage