NCEX principal investigators Elgar, Guza, and WHOI scientist Britt Raubenheimer operated an array of 40 instrument packages distributed from Scripps Pier north to Black´s. The tripod packages were placed at varying depths approachable on foot during low tide to as deep as five meters (16.4 feet). In deference to surfers, instruments were not placed in Black´s Bowl.

At locations of instrumented tripods, measurements of pressure showed water depth and wave height, and measurements of currents showed the speed and direction of water motion. Free-floating drifters followed the moving water, indicating the locations of rip currents and other flow features.

As Darnell and other scuba divers began dismantling the instrument packages in late November and pulling cable lines out from beneath as much as several feet of sand, other technicians were still servicing instrument platforms placed in deeper waters where wind and tide, rather than waves, become the main impetus for currents.

Tom Herbers, another NCEX principal investigator and former Scripps student who is now at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, said some aspects of the experiment will verify the results of numerical models that have predicted what could take place in a complex surfzone like La Jolla´s. In other areas, the data will simply be a starting point for questions researchers doesn´t yet know to ask.

"When it comes to circulation aspects of the problem, we really don´t have any firm theories," said Herbers, standing on the deck of research vessel Robert Gordon Sproul on a November morning. "That´s really an area where we don´t understand the physics very well."