Collections by the Exploratory Fishing Vessels 



Oregon, Silver Bay, Combat, and Pelican 



made during 1956 to 1960 



In the southwestern North Atlantic 



By 



HARVEY R. BULLIS, JR., AND JOHN R. THOMPSON 



Supervisory Fishery Biologists (General) 

 Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Biological Laboratory 

 Pascagoula, Miss. 



INTRODUCTION 



The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries has 

 conducted fishery explorations in the tropical 

 and subtropical waters of the western North 

 Atlantic since 1950. Initially the work was 

 confined to the Gulf of Mexico with a single 

 vessel, the Oregon . In 1956 and 1957, an 

 exploratory shrimp trawling survey was car- 

 ried out on the Atlantic coast off the South- 

 eastern States with the chartered vessels, 

 Pelican and Combat (Bullis and Rathjen, 1959). 

 In 1957 a medium-sized New England trawler, 

 the Silver Bay , was chartered for 2 years of 

 trawling and dredging work in the Gulf of 

 Mexico (Captiva and Rivers, 1960), permitting 

 part-time use of the Oregon on shrimp trawling 

 surveys in the western Caribbbean and as far 

 south as the mouth of the Amazon River 

 (Bullis and Thompson, 1959). In 1959, the 

 Silver Bay was moved to Brunswick, Ga., to 

 continue shrimp trawling explorations and to 

 begin a fish trawling survey off the south- 

 eastern states. In addition to these vessels 

 which have been used almost continuously, the 

 Bureau's fishing gear research vessel 

 George M . Bowers , now stationed at Panama 

 City, Fla., has been used intermittently in 

 exploratory fishing projects in the region. 



The underlying aim of the total regional 

 exploratory program is to inventory fishery 

 resources in the western Atlantic south of 

 Cape Hatteras; an integral part of the program 

 is a gross faunal survey. Necessity for this 

 survey was recognized shortly after start of 

 the work in 1950, as the diversity of the 

 species complex became apparent in hundreds 

 of new geographical records and a rapidly 

 expanding list of undescribed species and 

 genera, and as our generally poor knowledge 

 of the faunal magnitude became obvious. 



The diversity of faunal collections obviously 

 required studies by many different taxonomic 

 specialists, which by far surpassed the capa- 

 bilities of the limited staff assigned to the 

 program. The large volume of biological 



material being assembled also surpassed the 

 capabilities of any single institution to provide 

 all identifications and taxonomic studies needed 

 to meet the needs of the survey. So gradually 

 an extensive program of specimen exchange 

 was developed with any and all interested 

 taxonomists dealing with western Atlantic 

 marine biota. Basic and representative collec- 

 tions were deposited in the U.S. National 

 Museum. General collections of duplicate 

 material also have been transferred to many 

 of the major institutional collections throughout 

 the United States. Over the years, the list of 

 cooperators has reached about one hundred 

 systematic zoologists and botanists from many 

 biological institutions. All told, some 75,000 

 verified identifications have been received 

 from the distribution of an estimated two 

 million specimens. 



A resume of the identifications made on 

 board ship and received from collaborators 

 covering the work of the Oregon during 1950-55 

 was published in 1956 (Springer and Bullis) as 

 Fish and Wildlife Service Special Scientific 

 Report—Fisheries, No. 196. The basic intent 

 of that paper was to serve as liaison among 

 the scientists working on the collections of 

 fishes, crustaceans, and mollusks, and a small 

 edition of 1,200 copies was printed. The supply 

 was quickly exhausted, and within a few years 

 the report was out of print. Because SSR-F 

 No. 196 contained a wealth of new distributional 

 records, including those for new species that 

 had been described from Oregon collections 

 in diverse journals, it was used extensively 

 as a quick summary reference by most taxono- 

 mists and ecologists dealing with the offshore 

 marine fauna of the region. We have since 

 received innumerable requests for a similar 

 presentation of identifications and locality 

 records that were submitted subsequent 

 to the publication of SSR-F No. 196, and 

 for summaries of the determinations 

 that have been made from the collections 

 of the exploratory work conducted since 

 1955. 



