Significant progress has been made at the New Jersey margin in the documentation and calibration of sequence formation and in developing some quantitative understanding of how patterns of sedimentation relate to both eustatic change and noneustatic phenomena. However, much of the Miocene remains to be sampled adequately, particularly in the mid- to inner continental shelf where depocenters of this age are best developed. Cores are needed also from the Cretaceous of the Coastal Plain to evaluate the potential role of eustasy in a tectonically simple setting during an interval in which continental ice sheets were small to absent. One of the enduring puzzles of the New Jersey margin is why the numerous glacial-interglacial cycles of the Pleistocene are represented by so few geometrically expressed sequences, in spite of the presence of abundant sediment of appropriate age. Also to be resolved are stratigraphic details of the past 125 k.y. and the role of ice sheet loading and unloading of the margin in influencing patterns of sedimentation and erosion since 550 ka. The eustatic paradigm has strongly influenced stratigraphic research over the past quarter-century. General issues of current interest relate to questions of phase in the sedimentary response to sea level change and to the range of phenomena other than eustasy that play a significant role in governing sedimentation.
The Ocean Drilling Program will end in 2003, but another scientific drilling program entitled IODP, or the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, is likely to take its place. So-called "mission-specific" drilling platforms (i.e., jack-ups, semisubmersibles, and so on) are expected to be part of the technology deployed for IODP. With such technology, core recovery and logging of sand-rich sections on thickly sedimented inner continental shelves for science will become a reality. As of this writing, proposed drilling for early Neogene and Paleogene "sea level" objectives on the New Jersey inner shelf is highly ranked by the international scientific community and will be considered for drilling by a "mission-specific" platform as part of IODP in 2004.