RESEARCH AND THE FISHERIES SERVICE'S 

 SECOND 100 YEARS 



Philip M. Roedel^ 



A year ago, in 1971, we celebrated the one hun- 

 dredth year of a Federal fishery service. This 

 was an occasion, depending upon the individual, 

 for self-congratulation, a tabulation of a century 

 of successes, wonderment that so many could 

 accomplish so little in so long, and on the part 

 of a number of us serious thought and study of 

 where the first century had brought us and 

 whence we might wish the second to lead us. 

 What can we learn from the past; how should 

 we change our ways if we are to cope adequately 

 with problems as we see them today and foresee 

 they will be tomorrow? 



The first century had its moments of great 

 success, its moments of failure, and we can ex- 

 pect the same in our second, hoping and planning 

 that there will be more of the former and fewer 

 of the latter. This first century began with the 

 era of descriptive ichthyology, with fisheries sci- 

 ence as we know it today growing from these 

 beginnings. We can follow the development of 

 the science from one essentially zoological — and 

 a limited range of zoology at that — ^to one en- 

 compassing all aspects of biology, particularly 

 physiology and genetics, and going beyond the 

 biological sciences to oceanography, mathemat- 

 ics, and statistical analysis in our attempts to 

 understand and predict fluctuations in abund- 

 ance. Rather late in the first century we find 

 food science entering as a partner in fisheries 

 research. Only recently has there been an ac- 

 ceptance, unfortunately still given grudgingly in 

 some circles, of economic, social, and legal re- 

 search as legitimate fisheries tools. 



The first century, until its last decade or two, 

 was one in which the pace was leisurely. There 

 was time for thoroughgoing analysis, for pro- 



^ Director. National Marine Fisheries Service, Wash- 

 ington, D.C. 20235. 



grams that satisfied the scientist's legitimate and 

 proper desire to have a full understanding of the 

 system he was studying before making pro- 

 nouncements on or recommendations concerning 

 its status or management. 



To be sure, it was concern over the status of 

 certain stocks that led to the establishment of 

 the Federal fishery service in 1871, and of, for 

 example, the California State Fisheries Labora- 

 tory in 1917, and the International Fisheries 

 (now Halibut) Commission in 1924. The col- 

 lapse of the Pacific sardine fishery in the 1940's 

 gave warning that the pace of research might be 

 too slow, that scientists might be called upon for 

 recommendations based on — to them — insuffi- 

 cient evidence, that fisheries science could ill- 

 afford internecine warfare, and that a new breed 

 of man, the skilled biopolitician, was desperately 

 needed if the findings of the scientists were to 

 be translated into effective laws in time to do 

 any good for an overfished stock. 



It was also forced upon our attention in the 

 remaining two decades of this first century that 

 other nations had indeed developed a new breed 

 of fishermen, one that has changed all the rules 

 of the game. 



The tremendous fishing power of the distant- 

 water fleets, their worldwide mobility, and their 

 capability for pulse fishing finally brought home 

 to us toward the close of the first century the fact 

 that fisheries now could be explored, developed, 

 exploited, overexploited, and left to their fate 

 in far less time than traditional methods of stock 

 assessment could give an estimate of optimal 

 yield. We found also that existing political and 

 institutional arrangements were not capable of 

 responding to these new pressures. 



To cope with this we must turn to rapid as- 

 sessment techniques, reliance on data that once 

 would have seemed pitifully inadequate, to "quick 



Manuscript accepted February 1972. 



FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 70, NO. 3, 1972. 



537 



