Reminiscences of MODE

The specific topic of this memoir is the Mid Ocean Dynamics Experiment (MODE), later renamed MODE-1. This was a multi-investigator collaborative research program funded by the National Science Foundation during the first half of the 1970s as part of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE), with additional support from the Office of Naval Research and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Agency (NOAA). A complete documentation is beyond the reach of this author, who was one of the participating scientists with no formal responsibility for the program as a whole. Instead, the goal is to convey a sense of the excitement of bringing some theoretical tools learned in another field to bear on a basic scientific problem, and to sketch anecdotally some of the highlights of the group interactions that ensued. An underlying theme is the gradual transformation of physical oceanography from a discipline dominated by independent investigators, each with their private research program linked only by publication of final conclusions, into a collaborative enterprise in which talents, resources, ideas, and observational data must be pooled in order to address the fundamental problems.