And
you thought Black’s Beach was just a place to go for that “all-over” tan.
When nearshore oceanographers
were searching for a challenging piece of coastline to study, they
needed
to look no further than
the storied
beach just north of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
 Last fall’s Nearshore Canyon Experiment (NCEX) involved 10
institutions from around the country and 20 lead researchers, nearly
a third of whom were either Scripps Ph.D. graduates or former faculty
members. This class reunion was spent trying to figure out the physics
behind the movement of sand and the phenomenal waves that put Black’s
on the surfing map. The research site’s proximity to Scripps
was pure gravy.
“It was the right combination of interesting
physics and a manageable field setting,” said Robert Guza,
SIO ’74, an NCEX principal
investigator, who has since begun taking part in a $20-million
statewide ocean current monitoring project awarded by the California
Coastal
Conservancy.
The NCEX researchers whose
instrument platforms dotted the surf zone for three months managed
to fend off the ire of local surfers by agreeing to leave their
most hallowed ground, Black’s Bowl, alone. The scientists
were powerless, though, to avoid getting mooned by Black’s
other famous denizens, the nude sunbathers.  |
