Ch. 6— Environmental Considerations • 219 



Photo credit: S. Jeffress Williams, U.S. Geological Survey 



Hallsands once stood on a narrow ledge of rock protected by a cliff and high pebble ridge. The disappearance of this 



small fishing village was the result of dredging 650,000 tons of gravel offshore over a 4-year period. Removal of such 



vast quantities of offshore sediments from 1897 to 1901 altered wave patterns and caused beach erosion of 12 to 19 



feet by 1904. By 1917, foundations of 29 homes were undermined by the waves and fell into the sea. 



the taxonomy of deepsea creatures. Improvements 

 in navigational capabilities are needed; in order to 

 conduct "before and after" studies, it is important 

 to return to the exact area sampled. 



A compendium of available studies and the data 

 produced on both shallow and deep water environ- 

 ments is sorely needed. Unfortunately, a great deal 

 of research on environmental impacts to offshore 

 areas, performed for particular agencies and insti- 

 tutions, has never appeared in peer-reviewed liter- 

 ature. These studies may be quite useful in de- 

 scribing both the unaltered and altered offshore 

 environment and may be direcdy applicable to pro- 

 posed mining scenarios. An annotated bibliogra- 

 phy summarizing all the information that went into 

 the compilations of MMS Task Forces (see boxes 



6-G and 6-H), DMRP, DOMES —see box 6-F, 

 NOMES — see box 6-C, and Information from the 

 Offshore Environmental Studies Program of the 

 Department of Interior developed in conjunction 

 with developing EISs for Oil and Gas Planning 

 Areas would be invaluable. The combined research 

 budgets represented by these efforts is hundreds of 

 millions of dollars. Such data collection could not 

 be duplicated by the private and academic sectors 

 in this century. New research efforts — which tend 

 to be quite modest in comparison — would benefit 

 from easy access to this wealth of information. 



An important effort to collect available biologi- 

 cal and chemical data and screen them for quality 

 control is underway in the Strategic Assessment 

 Branch of NOAA. Since 1979, NOAA has been 



