“…Three primary means, i.e., (a) surface buoyancy plume (hypopycnal) dispersal, (b) dilute suspension dispersal in the bottom‐boundary layer, and (c) gravity‐driven turbidity (hyperpycnal) flows have been suggested to be responsible for transporting fine‐grained sediment (mud to fine sand) across continental shelves [ Walsh and Nittrouer , ]. Whilst the first two means of sediment transport have been documented extensively [e.g., McCave , ; Colby , ; Wright , ; Cacchione et al ., ; Fredsoe and Deigaard , ; Nielsen , ; van Rijn , ; Nittrouer and Wright , ; Bursik , ; Bennett et al ., ; Syvitski and Morehead , ; Hill and McCave , ; Geyer et al ., ; McKee et al ., ; Moriarty et al ., ], mechanisms for triggering and maintaining a gravity‐driven turbidity flow on relatively flat (slope less than 0.012) continental shelves and its quantitative contribution to across‐shelf sediment transport have recently started to attract considerable interest [e.g., Trowbridge and Kineke , ; Kineke et al ., ; Sternberg et al ., ; Ogston et al ., ; Traykovski et al ., ; Wright et al ., ; Scully et al ., ; Friedrichs and Wright , ; Dalrymple and Cummings , ; Harris et al ., ; Hsu et al ., ; Macquaker et al ., ; Ozdemir et al ., ; Corbett et al ., ; Kampf and Myrow , ; Hale and Ogston , ; Hooshmand et al ., ].…”