1 At the time drilling ended, there were about four wells that were 



2 . cleaning up and moving off, discharging whatever drill muds were 



3 discharged, and at that time we see the largest kick in the barium. 



4 The closest well, if I'm not mistaken, was about 9 kilometers away 



5 from this particular location where the tidal ellipse is on the order of 



6 3 kilometers, and, therefore, one has to make the argument that the mean 



7 flow and the other currents impacting the Georges Bank area are 



8 sufficient to move material introduced to the continental shelf to the 



9 canyon axis. 



10 I think this is fairly good evidence that in fact there is 



11 communication between the shelf and the canyon axis. 



12 There is other data that we noticed in the Georges Bank Monitoring 



13 Program in both the heads of Lydonia and Oceanographer Canyons, looking 



14 very carefully with this fine-fraction technique, which concentrates the 



15 signal of barium, we indeed saw a few percentage points increase, and 



16 above the analytical error, that would suggest that continental shelf 



17 material is making it to the heads of both of these canyons. 



18 Now I would like to show you some of the results of the surfaces 



19 of box cores collected during the MMS-funded deep-water monitoring 



20 program on the continental slope, comparing samples from the axis of 



21 Lydonia Canyon at 550 meters with a sample nearby on the continental 



22 slope at the same depth. 



23 What I am trying to show is that a few of the transition metals 



24 will show an increase in the canyon axis compared the shelf, once some 



25 normalization takes place for differences in grain size. Let me show 



26 that histogram. 



27 Let me explain that I first devised a normalization factor by 



28 dividing the metal concentrations to aluminum, taking advantage of the 



29 fact that there is an excellent correlation between aluminum and the 



30 percent of fine-grained sediments. 



31 So, if you take the bulk sediments and you divide the metal levels 



32 by aluminum, you are immediately normal as to variations in texture. 



33 The canyon-axis samples are slightly more coarse than the continental 



34 slope. 



66 



