Physical properties of sea surface films

The earliest reported observations of natural films on the sea made use of this simple indicator, and much of this work is described in the papers, and references cited therein, of Ewing (1950), Stommel (1951) and LaFond (1959). When surface slicks are seen, they are usually aligned in long, parallel streaks that may or may not be oriented with respect to the wind (Blanchard, 

Garrett and Bultman (1963) and Garrett (1967a) have shown by laboratory studies that insoluble monolayer films will damp out capillary waves on a water surface with an exponential decay of wave amplitude with distance from the wave source given by  

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