I worked at SIO for 5 years around the mid 2000s, but not on FLIP. Many of the folks there were remarkable people. One such person was one of the people who got FLIP started, Walter Munk.[^1]
He was an interesting guy. He left Austria during the Anschluss and started working on his doctorate at SIO. When the US entered the war he put his PhD on pause to enlist in the US Army Ski Corps. As a native German speaker and former ski instructor, he thought it was a good fit.
A little over a year later, the Department of War found out from Roger Revelle and Harald Sverdrup that they had a talented oceanographer deployed to the front lines. So they pulled him out to help with submarine warfare and the planning of some upcoming amphibious landings in Africa, and later, Normandy.
He was still working at SIO into his 90s. And, as was the case with all the scientists and staff at SIO, he was an all-around nice person.
SIO was a chill place to work. A good portion of the folks kept surfboards in their offices so they could surf before work. You weren't going to get rich working there, but the people and the location were hard to beat.
I visited SIO briefly in the late 80s, and my most vivid memory is of a long haired dude in a Hawaiian shirt bursting into our meeting to announce "surf's up!", at which point everything stopped and everyone left. Back then it all seemed impossibly exotic to a PhD student from London.
As someone who recently started surfing, I understand the cultural timing a lot more now.
Good surfing requires pretty particular types of waves. Which in turn requires particular wind. Even at good locations, these are transient conditions that can appear and disappear at the whim of nature (even over the course of an hour).
Ergo, surf's up = drop things that don't need to be done ASAP
They'll be there later. Good waves probably won't.
Oof, those are some gnarly waves. Wave structure as a surfed experience is my favorite part so far: there are so many wave nuances I never noticed before.
Australian slabs - the big ones out of the polar south tend to have waves within waves and can even "triple curve" over; I'm in the west The Right (last of the three) was my local for a few years.
I used to surf near Scripps Pier while in college and I remember there were always a couple people sitting outside in beach chairs working on their laptops.
He was an interesting guy. He left Austria during the Anschluss and started working on his doctorate at SIO. When the US entered the war he put his PhD on pause to enlist in the US Army Ski Corps. As a native German speaker and former ski instructor, he thought it was a good fit.
A little over a year later, the Department of War found out from Roger Revelle and Harald Sverdrup that they had a talented oceanographer deployed to the front lines. So they pulled him out to help with submarine warfare and the planning of some upcoming amphibious landings in Africa, and later, Normandy.
He was still working at SIO into his 90s. And, as was the case with all the scientists and staff at SIO, he was an all-around nice person.
SIO was a chill place to work. A good portion of the folks kept surfboards in their offices so they could surf before work. You weren't going to get rich working there, but the people and the location were hard to beat.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Munk