1 important to people who are interested in the whole issue of allowing or 



2 not allowing drilling. 



3 DR. VALENTINE: Well, we have to also include the fact that this 



4 lobster and trawl fish issue is in. 



5 DR. TEAL: That's what I say. It is not just that you don't trawl 



6 there, but that you do have traps. 



7 MR. LANE: How are you going to integrate the discussion of impact 



8 producing agents or activities? Is that going to be done for each of 



9 the habitats or discussion topics, or is that going to be a separate 



10 section, saying that now we know this about the habitat and now that we 



11 know this about the flow regime, this is what it means in terms of OCS 



12 activities and their impact in these areas. 



13 DR. TEAL: I was proposing, when I initially spoke, that that come 



14 separate. This is what we know about it now and then, from that 



15 knowledge, what can we say about the impacts? 



16 DR. BUTMAN: This is a motherhood statement about canyons and why 



17 they are special and why we care about them. That was one thread that I 



18 saw in the discussion yesterday. 



19 Then, primarily from a physical point of view, I tried to list 



20 four or five questions here which I think we need to answer before we 



21 address the hypotheses and I will just read them to you. Then, if you 



22 think it is reasonable, we can discuss them. 



23 The first one, and you can state this either as a question or as a 



24 hypothesis. I am just sort of paraphrasing it here. The first one is: 



25 Particles enter the canyon from the shelf. That's important because we 



26 want to know, if there is drilling around the margin, that the particles 



27 from that drilling activity will enter the canyon. That is one 



28 question. 



29 The second question or statement is: Fine grain sediments 



30 accumulate in canyons. 



31 The third one is: What is the potential for accumulation in 



32 canyons? 



33 A fourth one is: What are the unique characteristics of canyons 



34 that might make results from previous studies at OCS effects on drilling 



184 



