Reflections of an Equatorial Oceanographer
109
to NSF and ONR. We all spent an afternoon on Walter Duing’s sailboat in Biscayne
Bay, laying out a possible program. We got our colleagues to write the necessary
proposals, and we wrote a brief cover document for the program. The Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) had already announced that the First GARP
Global Experiment (FGGE) would take place in 1977 and 1978. Our idea was to do
pilot studies to allow us to plan a successful oceanographic component for FGGE in
the Indian Ocean.
Later that spring, Stommel and I attended a meeting that Joe Smagorinsky
hosted at GFDL to start discussing a monsoon program for the FGGE. We laid out
our plans for INDEX. Joe Smagorinsky asked how well we needed to know the wind
field that was driving the system. I said that in the tropics we needed daily averages
on 1-degree squares, unless someone could demonstrate that the winds were coherent
on longer scales. Smagorinsky said it would be a long time before we got that sort
of resolution, but that some engineers at NASA thought it could eventually be done
from satellites. Only now has this become possible.
In the summer of 1974 I went to WHOI to take part in the GFD course. I stopped
at GFDL in Princeton on my way to Woods Hole, to start work with George Philander
on our chapter for volume 6 of The Sea (see Moore and Philander, 1977). Early in
July, Henry Stommel and I made a day trip from Woods Hole to NSF in Washington,
D.C. and delivered the first set of INDEX proposals to Gene Bierly. These were
eventually funded, and we set up an INDEX program office at Nova, with Jan Witte
as the coordinator.
At the end of the summer as I was returning to Fort Lauderdale I met Bill
Richardson in Washington, D.C. He was on his way to Maine with the Nova R/V
Gulfstream. His plan was to spend the fall at the Bigelow Laboratory in Boothbay
Harbor, Maine, testing a satellite-tracked drifting buoy he was developing for the
NOAA National Data Buoy Center, for use in the southern oceans during FGGE.
His approach was to launch buoys on day cruises out of Boothbay, and subsequently
track their progress via research aircraft. Peter Niiler was about to move from Nova
to Oregon State University, and Richardson asked me to watch out for the laboratory
while he was away. By this time Charlie Yentsch had left Nova to take on the Directorship of the Bigelow Laboratory, Dayton Carritt had moved to the University of
Massachusetts, and Mark Wimbush had joined the Nova faculty.
In early January 1975, Bill Richardson and four others sailed from Boothbay
Harbor aboard the R/V Gulfstream and never returned. There was a severe storm
that started the next day and the Coast Guard investigation concluded that the ship
foundered during the storm. The body of one crew member was eventually found.
Ironically, Richardson had just become the chairman of the University–National
Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) Advisory Committee that month. His
loss prompted UNOLS to promulgate a set of safety standards.
The loss of Richardson and four others put the lab at Nova in a terrible situation.
Through the hard work of those left at the lab at Nova, and the generous support of the
University and the community, the laboratory survived. I was made Acting Director,
109
to NSF and ONR. We all spent an afternoon on Walter Duing’s sailboat in Biscayne
Bay, laying out a possible program. We got our colleagues to write the necessary
proposals, and we wrote a brief cover document for the program. The Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) had already announced that the First GARP
Global Experiment (FGGE) would take place in 1977 and 1978. Our idea was to do
pilot studies to allow us to plan a successful oceanographic component for FGGE in
the Indian Ocean.
Later that spring, Stommel and I attended a meeting that Joe Smagorinsky
hosted at GFDL to start discussing a monsoon program for the FGGE. We laid out
our plans for INDEX. Joe Smagorinsky asked how well we needed to know the wind
field that was driving the system. I said that in the tropics we needed daily averages
on 1-degree squares, unless someone could demonstrate that the winds were coherent
on longer scales. Smagorinsky said it would be a long time before we got that sort
of resolution, but that some engineers at NASA thought it could eventually be done
from satellites. Only now has this become possible.
In the summer of 1974 I went to WHOI to take part in the GFD course. I stopped
at GFDL in Princeton on my way to Woods Hole, to start work with George Philander
on our chapter for volume 6 of The Sea (see Moore and Philander, 1977). Early in
July, Henry Stommel and I made a day trip from Woods Hole to NSF in Washington,
D.C. and delivered the first set of INDEX proposals to Gene Bierly. These were
eventually funded, and we set up an INDEX program office at Nova, with Jan Witte
as the coordinator.
At the end of the summer as I was returning to Fort Lauderdale I met Bill
Richardson in Washington, D.C. He was on his way to Maine with the Nova R/V
Gulfstream. His plan was to spend the fall at the Bigelow Laboratory in Boothbay
Harbor, Maine, testing a satellite-tracked drifting buoy he was developing for the
NOAA National Data Buoy Center, for use in the southern oceans during FGGE.
His approach was to launch buoys on day cruises out of Boothbay, and subsequently
track their progress via research aircraft. Peter Niiler was about to move from Nova
to Oregon State University, and Richardson asked me to watch out for the laboratory
while he was away. By this time Charlie Yentsch had left Nova to take on the Directorship of the Bigelow Laboratory, Dayton Carritt had moved to the University of
Massachusetts, and Mark Wimbush had joined the Nova faculty.
In early January 1975, Bill Richardson and four others sailed from Boothbay
Harbor aboard the R/V Gulfstream and never returned. There was a severe storm
that started the next day and the Coast Guard investigation concluded that the ship
foundered during the storm. The body of one crew member was eventually found.
Ironically, Richardson had just become the chairman of the University–National
Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) Advisory Committee that month. His
loss prompted UNOLS to promulgate a set of safety standards.
The loss of Richardson and four others put the lab at Nova in a terrible situation.
Through the hard work of those left at the lab at Nova, and the generous support of the
University and the community, the laboratory survived. I was made Acting Director,