1 DR. COOPER: Trawlers would know to stay away from them. 



2 DR. RAY: Supposedly so, because they've got 1000-gallon or 2000- 



3 gallon drum-type things, which are the buoys for those things. 



4 DR. COOPER: We found one of those little 12-pound gems in the 



5 center of the south central portion of Georges Bank once and raised hell 



6 with some of our fishing community over the loss. They wouldn't admit 



7 to it, at least initially. 



8 Some people's fear was that here you have a heavily laden scrod 



9 dragger about ready to bring in his last catch and head for New Bedford. 



10 Heavy seas come up and they hang up on something like that, and they 



11 could very easily flip them over. 



12 DR. BUTMAN: Is there any operational consideration? From a 



13 current measure, there is probably substantial shear in the water 



14 column, like the top is going one way and the bottom is going the other 



15 way at fairly moderate frequencies like a few hours, and the currents 



16 could be up to 50 or 70 centimeters to a knot. 



17 Are there operational considerations to having a drill in that 



18 kind of a shear environment with such strong flows? 



19 DR. RAY: There are, but those aren't strong enough. They had 



20 some trouble over in Brazil, off-shore Brazil, and I think even in the 



21 South Atlantic in some places, they've had to be careful. They have had 



22 to maybe sometimes pull up or do something, take some emergency 



23 precaution, when something like this occurred. These were real strong 



24 currents we're talking about. 



25 DR. BUTMAN: Does it need to get to 3 or 4 knots or something like 



26 that? 



27 DR. RAY: We were studying that when we were doing our deep water 



28 drilling in the 6,000 feet of water, we were constantly monitoring and 



29 also doing studies for the warm core rings to look for unusual currents 



30 and currents of different depths. Apparently, the parameters that exist 



31 there don't seem to cause a problem. 



32 Not only that, but we are drilling deep wells off the Gulf of 



33 Mexico now and it's pretty routine. 



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