POWELL: OSCAR ELTON SETTE: FISHERY BIOLOGIST 



his graduate work, receiving his Doctorate in 

 Biology from Stanford University in 1957; to 

 give lectures at the University; to continue col- 

 lecting butterflies on Jasper Ridge as he had 

 done in his student days; and to publish on a 

 species of Lepidoptera from central California, 



Sette always has been a firm believer in the 

 value of informal meetings. He was instrument- 

 al in organizing the Pacific Tuna Conferences; 

 he helped structure and actively participated in 

 the CalCOFI Conferences as he had in the Sar- 

 dine Meetings from their beginning in 1920. He 

 chaired, or was a committee member of, numer- 

 ous planning and steering committees through- 

 out the years. EPOC was a natural outgrowth 

 of his experience working with groups. 



In 1954 at a meeting of the Oceanography 

 Fisheries Meteorology Committee, Sette pro- 

 posed that various groups engaged in related in- 

 vestigations in the eastern Pacific join together 

 to coordinate the planning and execution of work 

 at sea, and to exchange information on research 

 program results. His proposal was acted upon 

 in the Committee's 1955 meeting, and EPOC, or 

 the Eastern Pacific Oceanic Conference, was 

 born. EPOC held its first meeting in 1956 with 

 Elton Sette as chairman and Joseph L. Reid, Jr., 

 as Secretary. For fifteen dedicated years both 

 men served EPOC and the entire ocean science 

 community. They made possible a forum for 

 discussion of oceanographic research and pro- 

 vided a medium by which the farflung investi- 

 gations of diverse academic and governmental 

 agencies could be coordinated. 



Dr. Sette's administration of international 

 oceanographic investigations to study stocks of 

 fishes that recognize no political boundaries, 

 brought him in close contact with scientists of 

 other countries who also were interested in these 

 pelagic resources. He attended many interna- 

 tional meetings to discuss common problems. He 

 was an official United States delegate to the Indo- 

 Pacific Fisheries Council in Singapore in 1949 

 and to the International Technical Conference 

 on the Living Resources of the Sea in Rome in 

 1955. He acted as Advisor to the U.S. Delegation 

 at a Fisheries Conference, Santiago, Chile, in 

 1955, and at the Law of the Sea Conference, 

 Geneva, 1958. He participated in numerous 



other meetings as a committee member, council 

 correspondent, or by presenting a paper. 



He has served as a consultant on oceanography 

 to the Director of the Bureau of Commercial 

 Fisheries and as special consultant to the Atomic 

 Energy Commission. He was a member of the 

 Ocean Resources Panel of the National Academy 

 of Sciences and is an advisor to the University 

 of California, Institute of Marine Sciences. 



Numerous professional and technical societies 

 have his support as an active member, including 

 Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. He is a founding 

 member of the American Institute of Fishery 

 Research Biologists, and a Fellow of the Amer- 

 ican Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence. Others include: American Fisheries So- 

 ciety; American Institute of Biological Sciences ; 

 American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpe- 

 tologists; American Society of Limnology and 

 Oceanography; American Wildlife Society; Bio- 

 metric Society; California Academy of Sciences; 

 Oceanographic Society of the Pacific; and, West- 

 ern Society of Naturalists. 



For outstanding service to the Federal Gov- 

 ernment, Oscar E. Sette was presented the U.S. 

 Department of Interior's gold medal award for 

 distinguished service on January 16, 1961. The 

 medal and citation delivered by Assistant Sec- 

 retary Leffler before an audience of several 

 hundred reads in part as follows: 



". . . . In recognition of his important contributions to 

 the scientific program of the Bureau of Commercial 

 Fisheries and his eminent career in Government, the 

 Department of the Interior bestows upon Dr. Sette 

 its highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award. 



FRED A. SEATON 

 Secretary of the Interior." 



It seems more than coincidental that sitting on 

 the stage beside Dr. Sette that day was Dr. Elmer 

 Higgins, who also received the Distinguished 

 Service Award for outstanding achievement. 



Dr. Sette's accomplishments are legion. It 

 would be difficult to select any one as the most 

 outstanding. He modestly sums up what he con- 

 siders to be his major achievements in two suc- 

 cinct statements. These are: contributions to 

 knowledge regarding pelagic sea fish and fish- 

 eries; and, the planning, organization, and 



631 



