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 4.0 SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 



4.1 General Comments on Implementing New Directions 



For many of the workshop participants, the deliberations were quite different from those experienced in other 

 mission agency planning sessions. The unique aspect of this meeting can be found both in the unusual breadth 

 of topics, three major studies, and the need to design studies which serve to take Minerals Management Service 

 (MMS) along a new course. As a consequence, considerable time and effort was devoted to discussing and 

 arguing the merits of the new departure rather than developing detailed plans. 



In retrospect, these debates were beneficial in that they underscored both the scientists and the managers lack 

 of experience in developing process studies of direct and immediate use to managers. The TEXLA Ecosystem 

 Workshop was tasked with applying the new process oriented concepts of oceanography to an applied situation 

 prior to their full basic development. The Long-Term Monitoring Workshop was tasked with developing a 

 reasonable program of unprecedented duration and spatial coverage with direct MMS application more than a 

 decade in the future. Finally, the Detection of Chronic Stresses Workshop was tasked with dealing with the 

 elusive issue of never yet found, low-level and chronic impacts. 



Three common themes were found in the deliberation of all three sessions. These are the need for innovation, 

 the need for predictive models, and the need for a management structure geared toward fostering new 

 approaches of direct value to MMS. 



4.2 Study-Specific Recommendations 



4.2.1 TEXLA Ecosystem Study 



The TEXLA Ecosystem Study Workshop answered its charge of providing advise on the implementation of a 

 process oriented study. With respect to the mission questions posed by MMS (section 2.1.5), it can be concluded 

 that 



• additional studies are needed because previous efforts have not led to definitive statements as to the 

 presence of impact; 



• process studies have the great advantage over descriptive studies in that an effort is made to understand 

 natural variation, rather to simply be swamped by it; 



process studies should not be expected to produce a simple indicator of "health". They will allow for 

 an understanding of variation. Indeed, there is no indication that descriptive studies in the Outer 

 Continental Shelf (OCS) provide any indicator of health. 



Implementation of the recommendations of the TEXLA working group will represent the greatest departure from 

 previous MMS activities of all of the three studies. Past ecosystem studies, as listed by Avent (section 2.2.5), 

 have all fallen in the category of descriptive inventories. Due to the emphasis upon benthic fauna, these previous 

 efforts have typically omitted process relevant measurements such as productivity, nutrient fluxes, carbon fluxes, 

 population recruitment, etc. In order to successfully adopt a process perspective, these omitted activities must 

 now become the primary focus of the study! 



Benthic population-process linkage is incorporated in the suggested ecosystem study, but is limited to the 10 most 

 abundant species in the megafaunal, macrofaunal, and meiofaunal populations. In addition, dominant 

 zooplankton and phytoplankton are to be included. These abundant species not only must be enumerated, but 

 it will be necessary to determine their position in the food web, quantify their contribution to carbon flux, and 

 relate their population dynamics to the varying physical environment. 



The characteristics of the desired study include the following: 



