Performance of a television camera system for the detection of oil slicks

We performed some laboratory experiments to evaluate a television camera system for sensing oil slicks. This system captures the marked differences in intensity of sunlight reflected from the surface of the sea and from the slick. We also proposed a novel method to compensate for the wavelength dependence of sunlight and the quantum efficiency of the CCD arrays, which has been ignored up to now. During laboratory experiments, a glass plate coated with an Al 2 O 3 film has been employed instead of a real slick. The experimental results showed that detection probability depends on the sample thickness and, greatly, on the angle of incidence.