Bairds Legacy
Progress and Change:
1947-1971
The late 1940's and 1950's brought additional programs, studies, and progress
to the Federal fisheries agency. Many new fishing grounds were discovered, and
better ways were found to fish them. Healthful benefits of fish oils continued
to be discovered, as were pitfalls with such pesticides as DDTfor
example, their toxicity to fish and other aquatic life, particularly during
early stages of life.
But perhaps the most important facet was international: Fisheries were fast
becoming globalized. The United Nations was set up in 1945, as was its Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Foreign fishermen found that they could
use huge factory trawlers in "international waters" just 3 miles from U.S.
coastlines, and two new international fisheries commissions were soon
organized: the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries
(ICNAF) and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC). These new
developments brought added responsibilities for enforcement.
In addition, U.S. fishermen opened their own distant-water Pacific fisheries,
targeting tuna, and the 80th Congress, in 1947, declared a policy of developing
and maintaining the enormous fishery resources of the tropical and subtropical
Pacific Territories. Thus, the Bureau's Pacific Oceanic Fishery Investigations
unit (POFI) was set up at Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, to explore,
investigate, and develop those high-seas fisheries.
Fish promotion and home extension" type work brought the Bureau added
recognition, as its staff home economists created thousands of new fish
recipes, put on countless fish cookery demonstrations, and helped large food
service groups (schools, hospitals, military units, etc.) learn to use fish.
Other technological research initiatives included a major study on freezing
fish at sea, work on the still untapped walleye pollock in the Bering Sea, and
a new technological research laboratory set up in Boston.
New mobile research laboratories, devised for special on-site investigations,
were deployed from the College Park, Md.; Boston; and Seattle Technological
Laboratories. Also in 1950, the agency's Pascagoula, Miss., field station was
set up for Gulf fishing and gear research. Studies located new brown and pink
shrimp fishing grounds, discovered a new royal red shrimp fishery, and helped
establish a longline fishery for tuna and swordfish in the Gulf.
Meanwhile, Federal fishery research in the northwest Atlantic in 1951 found
commercial quantities of tunas, leading to a new and growing east coast tuna
industry. On the opposite coast, the Columbia River Fishery Development
Program began, concentrating on fish passage problems at the river's large
hydroelectric dams.
The middle 1950's was another period of progress and change. On the east
coast, a British vessel, the Fairtry, became the first of the large
foreign factory trawlers to fish in then international waters on the Grand
Banks in 1954. Its success brought many other high-volume fishing vessels that
spurred later declarations of 200-mile zones by northwest Atlantic nations.
That same year, the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act was passed. Under this law, money
was earmarked for fishery-product and market research; fisheries development,
including development and implementation of voluntary grade standards for
fishery products; and other fisheries research.
Protection of North America's Pacific salmon from foreign fishing on the high
seas became increasingly critical, particularly since little was known of the
salmons ocean travels. A major study of salmon distribution in the
eastern North Pacific Ocean began in 1955, and within 5 years their general
distribution was firmly established and vital protective measures were
initiated. Continuing talks with Japan led to an agreement in 1958 that Japan
would abstain from catching salmon in the North Pacific east of long. 175deg.W;
research continued to determine the proper dividing line to separate stocks of
Asian and North American salmon.
In yet another major reorganization, the Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956
reestablished two Bureaus within a new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Servicethe
Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries
(BCF), the latter with an Office of the Director, an Office of Loans and
Grants, and four Divisions: Administration, Biological Research, Industrial
Research and Services, and Resource Management. Thus, the BCF was reformed
with most of the types of units and duties of the original Fish Commission and
Bureau of Fisheries, except for freshwater fish culture and sport fish
research.
The new Fish and Wildlife Act specifically charged the BCF with helping the
U.S. fishing industry by locating new fishing grounds, promoting trade and
marketing fish, developing new foods and products from fish, assisting with new
fishing technologies and vessel financing, and more. The Fisheries Loan Fund,
for example, created in 1956, was increased in 1958 from $10 million to $20
million.
BCF work in the late 1950's identified new tuna fishing grounds in the
northwest Atlantic, led to more efficient two-trawl rigs for the Gulf shrimping
industry, and found new fishing grounds for Pacific ocean perch off Alaska and
for shrimp off the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
On the international level, the first U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea
was held in Geneva in early 1958. And for the United States, a new interim
convention to protect the northern fur seals and a new protocol to further
protect sockeye salmon of the Fraser River were also concluded.
Finally, in 1959, the Bureau's long-term management of Alaska's territorial
fisheries ended as the new State of Alaska assumed that responsibility. BCF
research and law enforcement activities, however, continued, as did its
protection and management of the northern fur seal.
By 1960, the Bureau's original Woods Hole Laboratory moved into new buildings.
The original structure, occupied in 1885, had served for nearly 75 years. The
early 1960's also saw new research laboratories opened at La Jolla, Calif.;
Sandy Hook, N.J.; and Milford, Conn. Meanwhile the number of fisheries
attachés posted overseas increased to three, and the foreign fishery
reporting program received regular fishery reports from about 90 U.S. embassies
and consulates.
The 1960's also ushered in an even more aggressive era of foreign factory
trawler fishing near U.S. coasts. However, cooperative research between Bureau
scientists and those of other nations to assess the fisheries and identify
potential problems and solutions also grew.
Salmon culture and research, early mainstays of the Fish Commission and Bureau
of Fisheries, remained important, but for different reasons: emphasis swung to
restoration and maintenance of runs on the Columbia and other western rivers,
and also moved into salmon ranching and net pen culture studies, the latter now
an important source of fresh salmon.
In the late 1960's, of course, the Nation's interest in ecology and the
environment began to grow. Concern over marine and atmospheric programs led
Congress in 1966 to set up the "Stratton Commission," formally termed the
Commission on Marine Science, Engineering, and Resources. This
group recommended a new "National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency," leading a
wholly new era for the BCF.
With President Richard M. Nixon's Executive Order 11564, the new National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was indeed created in 1970 under
the Department of Commerce to use a "unified approach to the problems of the
oceans and atmospheres." The BCF was then renamed the National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS), placed in NOAA along with Interiors marine
sport fish research laboratories, and given a new mandate including the study
and conservation of saltwater sport fishes and marine angling.
Primary NMFS functions were assigned to three areas: Resource Research,
Resource Utilization, and Resource Management. And NMFS research was soon
consolidated under four major units, the Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and
the Northwest and Alaska Research Centers, each with associated satellite
laboratories.
Legacy
1871-1896
1897-1921
1922-1946
1947-1971
1972-1996
Summary
Future
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