FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70. NO. 3 



Staff of Pacific Oceanic Fishery Investigations, Honolulu, Hawaii. Left to right: 

 Walter M. Bosworth, Administrative Assistant; Keith Elliott, Statistician; Harold T. 

 Smither, Administrative Officer; Donald L. McKernan, Assistant Director; 0. E. Sette, 

 Director; Harry B. Hinkle, Operations Officer; Albert K. Akana, Marine Operations 

 Superintendent. 



(Photograph courtesy of National Fisherman) 



responsible for breeding centipedes, which reach 

 considerable size in Hawaii. Often they found 

 their way into the house where Mrs. Sette re- 

 ceived several bites. These she was quick to 

 blame on her husband and his compost. 



He was also an avid tennis player, and a good 

 one. While at POFI he encouraged and organ- 

 ized tennis tournaments at the Lab. When a 

 tournament was held, it was mandatory that a 

 player show up for the matches, no matter how 

 severe the hangover. 



Representatives of the tuna industry did not 

 think Hawaii was the right location for the 

 Bureau's tuna investigations. They wanted this 

 research centered in California near the tuna 

 canneries and the fishing fleet. Charles Carry, 

 Director of the Tuna Research Foundation and 

 spokesman for the industry, often gave Sette a 

 bad time about this and other matters. In this 

 connection, Carry tells about an incident that 

 happened in Santiago, Chile, where he and Sette 

 were attending an international fisheries meet- 

 ing in 1955. In all of Carry's frequent trips to 

 the Honolulu laboratory, he had never seen Elton 

 take a drink, and knew it was because he suf- 

 fered from stomach ulcers. But in Santiago, 



Elton drank with the rest of the group. Carry 

 asked why. Sette replied, "I have learned not to 

 take myself too seriously, nor you, Charlie." 



Each new assignment in Sette's life was an 

 expansion of his original interest. For five 

 years at POFI, his primary responsibilities were 

 to direct research and exploration on potential 

 fishery resources. Then in 1955, a new program 

 called Ocean Research came oflf the Bureau's 

 drawing board, and once more Sette was called 

 to pioneer a new direction in fishery research. 

 He was returned to the Stanford campus as 

 Chief of Ocean Research and director of another 

 new laboratory broadly chartered to examine all 

 available data concerning the oceans and relate 

 these to the abundance and distribution of fish. 

 He set about the herculean task of analyzing mas- 

 ses of sea surface temperature data, weather ob- 

 servations, and all known information concern- 

 ing fish availability. With the help of a small 

 but highly skilled team of biologists, ocean- 

 ographers, and meteorologists, an atlas contain- 

 ing 168 monthly mean sea surface temperature 

 charts for the Pacific Ocean north of latitude 20°, 

 covering the years 1949-1962, was published. 

 This remarkable man still found time to complete 



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