The combined surfzone and deep-water NCEX observations provide a complete picture of wave evolution over canyons.

Technicians on the Sproul deck hauled up kelp-covered platforms bearing current meters and pressure sensors similar to what Guza and Elgar were using closer to shore. They had initially positioned the platforms at depths of about 10 meters (32.8 feet) and had last serviced them a month earlier. A few octopuses that had made the platforms home dropped to the ship´s deck and were tossed back to sea as science party members began to download several week´s worth of data. The next day, the crew reloaded the sensors onto the platforms and returned the packages to their seafloor stations.

In all, a half-dozen types of surveys took place during NCEX that used these new technologies, the absence of which would have made this project impossible even a decade ago. But how successful researchers are in making sense of the La Jolla coastline remains to be seen. Elgar reports that some preliminary conclusions are already in.

"Regardless of what we thought this experiment was going to be when we started, it´s turning out to be even more complicated than we thought," Elgar said.