For several months the Southern California Research Institute in Los Angeles has been using the Lake of the Ozarks and two other places in the country to develop a national standard for field sobriety tests conducted in marine environments. On almost every Saturday afternoon during the summer at the lake, it is not uncommon to find thousands of boats backed together where drinking seems to be the favorite activity.

Missouri leads the nation in Boating While Intoxicated arrests. Most of those arrests come from Lake of the Ozarks, and most of the Lake of the Ozarks arrests come from Anderson Cove, commonly known as Party Cove. However, the Lake of the Ozarks is not the only place officials say they are having problems.

Another location being investigated by the Southern California Research Institute is Lake Havasu City, Ariz. where officials said they are having problems with boaters every weekend ranging from lewd behavior to drugs and alcohol. Arizona Game and Fish patrolman Tim Baumgarten said Lake Havasu is one of the top spring break party destinations for college students from Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.

"The boating activity approximates floating crime as opposed to recreational boating," Baumgarten said.

He said boating and boozing is a constant problem for Lake Havasu.

"What you'll see is all these beaches will be filled with people. You'll see the shoreline where boats can park. People will be partying, there will be loud music, and there will be a steady stream of traffic down this channel," Baumgarten said. "I've been involved in mass arrests where people were arrested for intercourse in public, and intercourse here on the beach, and intercourse on the bow of a boat."

Baumgarten said he fears these problems might become worse before they become better. He said his job is becoming increasingly difficult.

"The scary thing that I see is that if a young lady has had too much alcohol in her system, gets into one of those large groups of five to 600 people, we can't save her."

To help prevent accidents and drownings, and to increase prosecution rates at this desert lake, Baumgarten sought out the Southern California research institute to develop a way to better test a boater's drunkenness. He said every state and every jurisdiction in the country has its own field sobriety tests for marine environments, including Breathalyzers.

However, because of the inconsistencies between jurisdictions, today's field sobriety tests often don't hold up in court too well.

"It's not difficult for our officers to determine if someone's impaired, but six or eight months later it's difficult for the officers to convince a judge and a jury that person was impaired," Baumgarten said.

The research institute said they aim to nationalize and standardize a series of individual and sensitive tests, some of which are already in use in some jurisdictions. The key to this research is that it focuses on testing a boater while he or she remains seated in the boat. If an officer believes a boater is drunk, or is perhaps operating the boat recklessly, that officer can stop the boater, perform the test, and then arrest the boater on the water instead of having to take the boater back to shore.

Baumgarten said a boat is simply too unstable to administer a walk the line test like those used on our nation's roadways. In an effort to save lives, he said a standardized and thoroughly researched field sobriety test just might be enough to make boaters think twice about boozing and boating.

"To me I think that's the most tragic portion of this aspect of recreational boating, is that family members come here and end up burying their family members," Baumgarten said.

With the standardized field sobriety tests scheduled to be complete about two years from now, Baumgarten said he would hope boaters realize drinking and operating a boat is just as serious and dangerous of an offense as drinking and driving a car.

There were ten alcohol related deaths in the Lake of the Ozarks in the past year. Baumgarten said a better way to prosecute drunk boaters will improve matters.