Dr. Piacsek presented a talk on the computational science area of Oceanography, which he defined, as modeling the ocean. His talked was focused on the modeling of the circulation in ocean basins adjoining strategic straits including the Strait of Gibraltar (separating the Atlantic from the Mediterranean), the Strait of Otranto (separating the Adriatic Sea from the rest of the Mediterranean), the Fram Strait (separating the Arctic Basin from the Greenland Sea) and the Strait of Sicily (separating the east and west Mediterranean).

He pointed out that even though these straits are small in volume and area, they control the large through flow between the seas. He then presented some very interesting details the nature of the flow reversals and on the entering and exiting water masses. It is amazing how different the flows each strait are. He explained them to be different due to fact that the currents flow in complex patterns affected by wind, the water's salinity and heat content, bottom topography and more.

Dr. Piacsek presented several overheads on the possible flow reversals of the warm and cold water for the four straits discussed. He then presented several diagrams displaying satellite and computer generated representations of the geostrophic wind velocities in the Arctic and of ice motion.

He concluded with information and examples of the computational grids. The code for the Mediterranean runs was run on the SCI Origin 2000, using the pfa version of the SGI parallel compiler. The Arctic runs were run on the CM5-E and the Origin 2000 at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C.