1 population; I am saying if we wipe out the local population--would we 



2 consider it to be short-term versus the long term? 



3 I think for the reasons I mentioned the settling cues and the 



4 stock populations, I would be rather concerned about the sessile. 



5 As we talk about the quote-unquote "unique" canyon-- 



6 DR. AYERS: Before we get away from that, when you say you are 



7 concerned about the ones in that immediate area, if you had something 



8 there that was highly significant-- 



9 DR. HECKER: If you wipe out the population in one canyon, are you 



10 just wiping out the population in that canyon or is that canyon serving 



11 as the stock population for a canyon further down the way? 



12 I feel that there is transport out of the canyon and transport 



13 along the slope and possibly into the next canyon. Is this the way 



14 these organisms are moving around? I mean, what explains some of the 



15 patchiness of some of these organisms? 



16 Is it concentrations by currents in a specific area in terms of 



17 recruitment that these conditions are also good for them? I think there 



18 are still too many unanswered questions as to exactly what is causing 



19 the faunal patchiness and how this translates in terms of their 



20 strategy. Here, I am talking about specifically sessile canyon 



21 populations. 



22 DR. AYERS: How fast would they recover? 



23 DR. HECKER: How fast would they recover, yes. My instincts 



24 are--and I don't think anybody here would argue with me--if we wiped out 



25 a population, it would have a longer term impact on non-commercial than 



26 on mobile species. Mobile species can walk out; these sessile ones 



27 cannot. 



28 DR. AYERS: Don't we have some information in the literature on 



29 dredge sites or something where we've done some damage and looked at 



30 recovery rates? 



31 DR. HECKER: The information is that the highly mobile fauna 



32 recovers faster. 



33 DR. AYERS: 10 years? 5 years? 2 years? 



241 



