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natural -, it's all naturally occurring. We find it in sediment, whether we're talking about
<br />Waikoloa or Mauna Lani or whether we're talking about Makalawena, where there's nothing
<br />in terms of development. The levels are pretty much equivalent. So we do see it, but it
<br />doesn't appear to be doing anything in a negative sense, and these are low levels.
<br />All the other compounds we've sampled for, and by golly we've spent a lot of time, effort, and
<br />money doing this, we have been unable to find materials, and we've gone as far as sampling
<br />````
<br />the flesh of organisms. For example, paeula, because paeula will live more than 10
<br />``
<br />years, probably closer to 20 years, long live little shrimp. We've collected, taken paeula
<br />out of, for example, out of a pond at Mauna Lani where the golf course comes within about 20
<br />feet of the pond, and this is after the golf course had been there for years. We sampled the
<br />shrimp there. We sampled the shrimp in a controlled area miles out in the sticks where there's
<br />nothing around in terms of human development, couldn't find anything. Just, you know, as an
<br />example. So we've put a lot of effort into that, looking, you know -, I don't want to see these
<br />things get messed up, as a biologist, so I'm just as interested as anyone else to see what's
<br />going on.
<br />Now when we get to the ocean, what we see, I've just said, gee, we have high nutrients in
<br />certain places. These nutrients enter with the groundwater. They are dissolved nutrients.
<br />They go in with the groundwater into the ocean and they mix. It's been going on from time
<br />immemorial, well before my time and well before the time any human beings lived here. In
<br />general, we don't see a problem. The mixing continues very well. And a lot of the bottom
<br />communities never see, if you will, they never come in contact, because the bottom drops off
<br />in most places fairly rapidly here. You don't see a lot of -, we don't get high nutrient levels
<br />near the -, in our bottom samples because we sample offshore and we take surface and bottom.
<br />Surface very often tends to be high, but it dilutes very rapidly.
<br />If we had a problem in the nearshore marine environment and we -, with high nutrient loading
<br />coming in and impacting the marine communities, probably the first thing we would see would
<br />be plenty limu. And you folks show me where you got a lot of limu under water, I -, you
<br />know, on this coast. You don't. You got some limu on the intertidal rocks, you know, and
<br />you know, the turtles, the honu come up and feed on it at night and stuff, but subtidally, you
<br />O`ahu, you look around Mui, you know,
<br />don't have a lot of algae. You go and look around
<br />Mui's famous for all the limu problems. We don't have that here, you're very lucky, and I think
<br />partly it's because it drops off quick so the bottom communities
<br />And the other thing that happens here is that your fish communities and your grazers that you
<br />have in your nearshore waters here, your sea urchins and your parrot fish, your uhus and your
<br />maninis and your sturgeon fishes and stuff, are still reasonably abundant and so that's what they
<br />feed on. They feed on
<br /> algae, so they help to keep this all in balance.
<br />So you're in a good position and where development has happened, the levels that we've
<br />encountered have not been outside of the range that we have encountered in totally
<br />undeveloped areas, okay, so we've seen things go up, they'll go up and they'll come down,
<br />they'll bounce. With development, they tend to bounce like this, concentration of material
<br />through time, but the maximum reach of that bounce, from high to low, is not outside of what
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