Raised in Red Lodge, Montana, Frank Snodgrass joined the merchant marines as a young man, beginning what would become a lifelong connection with the sea.

He was working with John Isaacs, Joe Johnson, and Jack Putnam on the evaluation of the amphibious DUKW vehicle when he was persuaded to join Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), La Jolla, Calif., in 1953.

As a research engineer, Snodgrass' major fields of interest were oceanographic instrumentation and digital recording techniques.

Snodgrass pioneered several oceanographic techniques, including digital recording of wave pressure oscillation, the free-fall dropping of instruments to the sea floor for subsequent acoustic recall, and he was the first to design and use a portable seagoing laboratory.

Stations were established in New Zealand, Samoa, Palmyra (an uninhabited island in the Pacific), Hawaii, FLIP (an SIO special special-purpose vessel, which was moored in position for about a month), and Alaska.

This work was eventually collated a coherent volume which earned Snodgrass the degree of Doctor of Science from Flinders University of South Australia in 1970.

Frank Snodgrass solved this problem by designing and building a portable laboratory housing the equipment already assembled and pretested.

[10] Dropping instruments for later acoustic recall had its stresses: "There was a psychological block to overcome; it is not easy to let go of a line from which you have a year's budget of equipment hanging.”[8] In 1969, Walter H. Munk and Frank Snodgrass were named co-recipients of the Marine Technology Society's first Award for Ocean Science and Engineering.

The film features scenes of early digital equipment in use in field experiments with Munk's commentary on how unsure they were about using such new technology in remote locations.