1 studies in the North Sea, mainly by the British, and basically the 



2 . effectS'-community responses, this is the benthic community, effects are 



3 seen only in the benthos in the vicinity of mud and cuttings discharge 



4 and they are most pronounced in low-energy environments where mud and 



5 cutting solids accumulate. 



6 All the evidence to date is that there is substantial recovery 



7 within 1 year. In the North Sea, wherever they have used water-based 



8 drilling fluids as opposed to oil-based muds, there is substantial 



9 evidence of recovery or beginnings of recovery within one year after 



10 cessation of discharges. 



11 On the East coast in the mid-Atlantic, there was also some 



12 evidence of the beginning of recovery within 1 year. There has been a 



13 limited amount of study of bioaccumulation of metals in the field. 



14 There has been some indication of uptake of barium and chromium 



15 immediately after drilling again on the mid-Atlantic and in the Beaufort 



16 Sea and so forth. The other metals appear to be virtually unavailable 



17 or at least not distinguishable from the natural variability that you 



18 get in marine animals, especially benthic fauna. 



19 I am not aware of any real studies of accumulations of 



20 hydrocarbons from drilling fluids, at least water-based drilling muds, 



21 and so there is no documented evidence of uptake of hydrocarbons by 



22 benthic animals in the area of drilling mud discharges. 



23 Most of what I've said so far is fairly generic, let's get closer 



24 to home. I'm sure many of you have seen this slide before. This is the 



25 Georges Bank Benthic Monitoring Program, which was performed from '81 to 



26 '83 on Georges Bank. The round dots are the regional stations sampled 



27 quarterly for three years, a total of 12 cruises. 



28 The stars are locations of exploratory drilling rigs. There were 



29 two sites where we did site-specific monitoring. One was at station 5 



30 here and the other was at station 16 farther out in deeper water, about 



31 140 meters of water, this is in about 80 meters. 



32 So, as I say, we did regional and site-specific sampling over a 3 



33 year period. This is the-site specific array, an array of 29 stations 



34 located around the platform. The solid circles are the primary site- 



96 



