106
Dennis Wilson Moore
investigators from 12 U.S. institutions and the National Institute of Oceanography
(NIO) in England. There was an extensive management structure, with two cochairmen and an executive officer (a.k.a. the “troika”), an executive committee, a theoretical
panel, and at least six other committees. The 4-month-long field experiment was to
take place south of Bermuda during March–June 1973, and in the meantime everyone
was busy building instruments, designing arrays, making preliminary measurements,
and attending planning meetings. The principal investigators (PIs) constituted a group
called the MODE Scientific Council, which met every 2 months beginning in July
1971. There were many new instruments developed for MODE, including the WHOI
Vector Averaging Current Meter, the SOFAR float, a bottom-mounted pressure and
temperature recorder, the electromagnetic current profiler, and expendable current
probes launched from aircraft.
My job was to keep track of everything that was happening without telling the
PIs how to run their projects. I talked with everyone about how things were going,
planned the Scientific Council meetings, produced the needed documents, and tried
to be sure we were on schedule. I had lots of help from Hank, Allan, and the rest of
the Executive Committee. Everyone wanted the program to succeed.
A great deal of time was spent figuring out how to design the observing array.
During the summer of 1972 the theoreticians all went to NCAR for 10 weeks to work
out an experimental design, while the observationalists of the “Array Committee”
held a 2-week session at WHOI to put together their version of what should be done.
Russ Davis was the only person to attend both, so his ideas were well represented. The
MODE Executive Committee met weekly, often by conference phone. The meetings
were noteworthy for a number of reasons, including the number and strength of the
cigars that were smoked, as well as the loudness of some of the participants. Students
in the Green Building maintained that when we met on the 14th floor we could be
heard clearly on the 13th and 15th floors as well. Francis Bretherton and I were the
loudest! (See Chapter two in this volume.)
In the fall of 1972 there was a meeting on Numerical Models of Ocean Circulation sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and held in Durham,
New Hampshire. The meeting organizers felt it was important for the numerical modelers to know something about the measurements that would be available to test their
model results against. Nick Fofonoff and I wrote a paper on modern measurement
techniques, which I presented (see Fofonoff and Moore, 1975). The Proceedings
volume from the meeting was published in 1975. Henry Stommel’s remarks in the
conclusions section are well worth looking up (see Munk et al., 1975). He was talking
about the different styles of doing science that were in vogue at the time. IDOE was
in full swing, including MODE, NORPAX and CUE, and GEOSECS, all more or
less highly organized and involving lots of players. There were also the individual
investigators, like Rattray and Veronis. Stommel went on, “I see the motorcycle gang,
too—the Niilers and Gills and Welanders of this world. They are on their own, but I
don’t know how long they are going to last. . . . Then there are some very big buses,
with not very many people on them, and they seem to have UNESCO diplomatic
Dennis Wilson Moore
investigators from 12 U.S. institutions and the National Institute of Oceanography
(NIO) in England. There was an extensive management structure, with two cochairmen and an executive officer (a.k.a. the “troika”), an executive committee, a theoretical
panel, and at least six other committees. The 4-month-long field experiment was to
take place south of Bermuda during March–June 1973, and in the meantime everyone
was busy building instruments, designing arrays, making preliminary measurements,
and attending planning meetings. The principal investigators (PIs) constituted a group
called the MODE Scientific Council, which met every 2 months beginning in July
1971. There were many new instruments developed for MODE, including the WHOI
Vector Averaging Current Meter, the SOFAR float, a bottom-mounted pressure and
temperature recorder, the electromagnetic current profiler, and expendable current
probes launched from aircraft.
My job was to keep track of everything that was happening without telling the
PIs how to run their projects. I talked with everyone about how things were going,
planned the Scientific Council meetings, produced the needed documents, and tried
to be sure we were on schedule. I had lots of help from Hank, Allan, and the rest of
the Executive Committee. Everyone wanted the program to succeed.
A great deal of time was spent figuring out how to design the observing array.
During the summer of 1972 the theoreticians all went to NCAR for 10 weeks to work
out an experimental design, while the observationalists of the “Array Committee”
held a 2-week session at WHOI to put together their version of what should be done.
Russ Davis was the only person to attend both, so his ideas were well represented. The
MODE Executive Committee met weekly, often by conference phone. The meetings
were noteworthy for a number of reasons, including the number and strength of the
cigars that were smoked, as well as the loudness of some of the participants. Students
in the Green Building maintained that when we met on the 14th floor we could be
heard clearly on the 13th and 15th floors as well. Francis Bretherton and I were the
loudest! (See Chapter two in this volume.)
In the fall of 1972 there was a meeting on Numerical Models of Ocean Circulation sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and held in Durham,
New Hampshire. The meeting organizers felt it was important for the numerical modelers to know something about the measurements that would be available to test their
model results against. Nick Fofonoff and I wrote a paper on modern measurement
techniques, which I presented (see Fofonoff and Moore, 1975). The Proceedings
volume from the meeting was published in 1975. Henry Stommel’s remarks in the
conclusions section are well worth looking up (see Munk et al., 1975). He was talking
about the different styles of doing science that were in vogue at the time. IDOE was
in full swing, including MODE, NORPAX and CUE, and GEOSECS, all more or
less highly organized and involving lots of players. There were also the individual
investigators, like Rattray and Veronis. Stommel went on, “I see the motorcycle gang,
too—the Niilers and Gills and Welanders of this world. They are on their own, but I
don’t know how long they are going to last. . . . Then there are some very big buses,
with not very many people on them, and they seem to have UNESCO diplomatic