It will focus on the distribution of potential commercial deposits of cobalt rich ferromanganese crusts in the Area, the conditions leading to the formation of such deposits, an assessment of the patterns of diversity, endemism and scales of seamount faunas, and the factors that appear to drive those patterns.

In Puerto Rico, it grows in areas receiving from 900 to 2500 mm of precipitation.

To calculate the total area and volume of oil contaminated sediments, Saudi Arabia relies on a polygon of influence method.

Such white mineral deposits accumulate to a surface thickness of several millimeters and must be removed by chemical or mechanical means.

The models used are a Model for the Assessment and Remediation of Sediment ( MARS ) and an Oil Spill Contingency and Response Model ( OSCAR ).

Iraq also agrees that the coastal oil trench and oil deposit areas in Kuwait Bay are possible sources of oil impacting these locations.

However, the Panel recommended an alternative remediation programme to that proposed by Saudi Arabia, with reductions in both the area and the volume of contaminated sediments to be remediated.

There is a huge difference between potential deposits hidden somewhere in large shale formations and recoverable reserves that can actually be produced economically.

Iraq contends that there is no bioaccumulation data or other evidence to prove that the smoke plumes caused losses in production of livestock or poultry.

Iraq's general contention is that the model predictions of subtidal sediment contamination used by Kuwait to estimate biomass losses are not reliable.

Iraq states that, in the period since 1991, there have been no independent observations or assessments of lost or impaired ecological function and resource values that could be attributed to oil in subtidal sediments.

Kuwait describes MARS as a three dimensional hydrodynamics model that computes movement of water masses, at Gulf scale and in the Kuwait marine area, as driven by wind, tide, fresh water inflow and density gradients .