On 17 October 1989 the buildings of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories were destroyed by the magnitude 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake. Evidence at the time pointed to liquefaction of the sand under the facility as the cause. After a cruise on which side-scan sonar images and Uniboom seismic records were obatined adjacent the site of the labs it was realized that large scale slumping of the seafloor played a major role in the destruction. That slumping is evidenced by a series of slump scars and liquefaction sediment lobes that indicate movement of a large region in the direction of the nearby head of Monterey Canyon. This project will study the evidence of the submarine slumps and associated liquefaction sediment lobes before the evidence is obscured by winter storms. A shipboard program will collect repetitive side-scan surveys of the shallow areas of slumping, extend the previous side-scan survey to include the walls of the canyon, and sample the sediment lobes and slumps. Direct observations will be made in shallow water by divers primarily for the purpose of establishing the effects on benthic ecology and for comparisions with seasonal cycles.
