DRAKE 79 was  the major experiment of the International Southern
Ocean Studies (ISOS) program.  It followed a series of preparatory
experiments called FDRAKE, and like them was designed to study
circulation and transport processes in the Drake Passage.  (FDRAKE
stands for First Dynamic Response And Kinetics Experiment.)  Aanderaa
current meters were used throughout.

FDRAKE 75 began in January of 1975 with extensive hydrographic and
chemical data collection supplemented by an array of both short and
long term current meter moorings.  This experiment was continued in
January of 1976 (FDRAKE 76) with the collection of additional
hydrographic data and the setting of a second long term current meter
array.  The current meters were recovered in January of 1977 as a
part of FDRAKE 77.  At this time a cluster array in the center of
the Passage was deployed.  That array was recovered in December 1977
and a single year-long mooring (FDRAKE 78) was placed in the center
of Drake Passage.

This series of experiments culminated in DRAKE 79, which was designed
to reveal the time and space scales of flow variations in the region,
and to expand our knowledge of the distribution of local water mass
properties and their dynamics.  Current meters were placed in two
arrays.  The Main Line (ML) array contained 48 meters on 17 moorings
arranged in a line stretching across Drake Passage from Cape Horn in
the north to Livingston Island in the south.  A second array, the
Mapping and Statistics (MS) array, contained 22 current meters on 7
moorings in the center of the passage upstream of the main line.

All of the current meter moorings were subsurface, taut-wire moorings.
Their design followed in large part the WHOI intermediate mooring scheme.