Reproduced by permission of the University of Hawaii Press. However, ripples do not occur at all where dredged material continuously covers the sea floor, probably because the material is too cohesive and because there is too much coarse sediment.
Disorganized ripples are common near, but outside, the dredged-material deposits, also.
Although some sort of bedforms are present most places along the camera transects, the sea floor appears exceptionally smooth in natural sediment near the eastern end of some. Also, when the camera sled occasionally impacted the sea floor, the cloud of displaced sediment typically showed little or no deflection by currents as it collapsed. Currents were weak to nonexistent during our surveys, but the fresh appearance of many ripples suggests recent stronger currents in the area. X-radiographs show that most samples are extensively bioturbated with some degree of subtle, original stratification. A few instances of small fish interacting with the sea floor and infauna emerging from burrows were seen, but overall, evidence of animal- sediment interaction at the sea floor was uncommon.