The papers in this special volume represent a small segment of the published work undertaken at the HEBBLE site. Because the program is interdisciplinary in nature, specialized results of import in biology and physical oceanography for example have been published elsewhere. This volume represents the early, site-descriptive results from the program. While many of the results are descriptive, considerable effort has been made by the authors to show the implications for understanding of marine sedimentological processes. The objective of this final paper is to summarize these results and implications and on occasion add our own personal interpretation in an attempt to obtain for the reader a greater synthesis of the project. The organization of the HEBBLE project is largely reflected in the resultant organization of the major sections in this volume. Most of the results here focus on the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the HEBBLE site, with some attention being paid to the characteristics of the biological community at the site as needed to refine a truly marine sediment transport model. The success of estimating the deposition rate and of relating the bed modification and deposition dynamics to fluid forcing by the boundary layer are the key goals for the next two years. The results on the characteristics of the suspended sediment show that much information can be obtained by careful and repeated sampling of material, if the results are placed in their appropriate fluid mechanical setting (see McCave, this volume). The key implication of the field observations and laboratory and theoretical studies relates to the generation of longitudinal ripples. Of greatest import is the conclusion that such features are depositional; thus we are looking at bedforms that may well be preserved into the stratigraphic record. But if longitudinal ripples are depositional, then one of the cornerstones in discriminating between turbidites and contourites is now removed. Turbidites are preserved because of the rapid and high rate of local downslope deposition. Longitudinal ripples may likely be produced from the waning period of a storm when extreme rates of deposition occur; without knowing the local slope it may well be impossible to discriminate between turbidite and contourite deposits.