1 You have got a dominance of filter feeders all the way along 



2 there, as Barbara has shown. 



3 DR. HECKER: That's possible with the fine material, also, 



4 stripping the water column and with resuspension and I suspect 



5 resuspension is important in supporting some of the filter feeding 



6 populations. 



7 As that gets continually wafted up and strips the water column, it 



8 keeps going like this (indicating) and keeps passing past those filter 



9 feeders and they keep taking it, you are going to get more and more 



10 accumulation. 



11 DR. KRAEUTER: Right. 



12 DR. BUTMAN: Dick. 



13 DR. COOPER: Dick Cooper. There is another mechanism of vertical 



14 transport of contaminants down to the ocean floor that we haven't 



15 considered yet, I don't believe, and that's these krill that occur up to 



16 1,000 animals per cubic meter--l,000 per cubic meter. 



17 They go through extensive vertical migrations. They are feeding 



18 in the water column at night-time, transporting to the bottom, excreting 



19 waste down near the bottom. They are fed upon by your flounders and 



20 other organisms on the bottom. That could be a very significant 



21 mechanism of vertical transport down, too. 



22 There is one other thing. These krill seem to be--we don't have a 



23 lot of data on this, but these krill seem to be mostly concentrated in 



24 these submarine canyon environments. 



25 DR. BUTMAN: Do they eat sediments? Are they filter feeders? 



26 DR. TEAL: They filter stuff out of the water. 



27 DR. COOPER: They are feeding on particulate that, to some extent, 



28 probably scavenge some of these pollutants in the water column. This is 



29 a biological mechanism of vertical transport to the ocean floor. 



30 DR. BUTMAN: What is-- 



31 DR. TEAL: It is the same one we were talking about before, but 



32 with the point here that the Meganyctiphanes norvegicus are concentrated 



33 in the canyons. 



34 DR. HECKER: They are vertical migrators. 



202 



