Transport and transfer rates in the waters of the continental shelf and slope: SEEP

The SEEP Program was conceived in about 1980/1981 when most of the DOE-funded investigators in the Northeast decided to collaborate on a common experiment which was, for most, the next logical extension of their current research, but which was too large for any one or small subset to attempt on their own. Through a SEEP Executive Committee (consisting then of Walsh, Chairman; Biscaye, Csanady and Spencer), we proposed an experiment that had as its objective the quantitative determination of the fate of the fine-grained particulate material -- both biogenic and abiogenic -- observed in the waters of the continental shelf, but notably lacking in shelf sediments. Because most of the energy-related pollutants with which DOE is concerned become rapidly associated with fine-grained particles in the marine environment, a study of those particles and some pollutant proxies associated with them is, in effect, a study of the fate of pollutants. Specifically, it was posited that this fine material is transferred from the shelf to the slope waters by any of a number of mechanisms, and accumulated as part of the sediment on the continental slope. The SEEP Program was originally proposed in three successive phases in which experiments would be mounted first off New England and ending just north of Hatteras, with an intermediate experiment about mid-way between. The first experiment -- SEEP-I, off New England -- was carried out from 1983 to 1984, most of the papers from which were published in a special issue of Continental Shelf Research.