FOREWORD 



Beginning in the summer of 1950 the U. S. Fish and Wildlife 

 Service carried out a variety of fishing operations vath the explor- 

 atory fishing vessel Oregon in the Gulf of Mexico. Conventional 

 fishing gear and special modifications of the usual types of gear 

 were used to determine what fisheiy resources are available to the 

 Gulf fishing industry and to bring attention to the possibilities 

 for production of unused or neglected resources, either in fishing 

 grounds or in unexploited kinds of fishery products. The program of 

 exploration was prepared by the staff of the Exploratory Fishing and 

 Gear Development Section alor^ lines suggested by the Gulf States 

 I-larine Fisheries Commission. The primary objectives were exploration 

 and gear studies designed to give immediate assistance to the Gulf 

 fishing industry. Reports on the results of this work have been 

 published from time to time in Commercial Fisheries Review. 



The program of exploratory fishing and gear research is only 

 a part of a larger effort to assemble sufficient information to permit 

 proper managsnent of a resource of unknown magnitude and of consider- 

 able inportance to the entire United States. This larger program in- 

 volves not only several groups within the Fish and Wildlife Service 

 but also agencies of the States surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, public 

 and private research institutions, and the fishery industries' research 

 facilities. 



One of the long-range objectives is to make an inventory of 

 G\alf resources. In an area as large and diverse as the Gulf of Mexico, 

 useful quantitative estimates of the abundance of species are out of 

 reach at present. (For a discussion of this see Gordon Gunter, 

 "Relative Number of Shallow Water Fishes of the Northern Gulf of Mex- 

 ico, With SoHE Records of Rare Fishes from the Texas Coast", American 

 Midland Naturalist . July 1941, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 194-200. For a 

 qualitative inventory" a good start has been made for some of the 

 animal groups in shallow waters. Several recent publications by 

 Isaac Ginsburg of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service on fishes of 

 the Gulf and the series of publications of the University of Texas 

 Institute of Marine Science are among the important contributions. 



Fishery Bulletin 89, "Gulf of Mexico, Its Origin and Marine 

 Life" published in 1954 (Fishery Bulletin of the Fish and Wildlife 

 Service, 55: 1-604, 72 figs.) sumir^irized in conveniait form much of 

 the present knowledge about the Gulf of Mexico. Contributions of its 

 55 authors serve as an orientation to the problems of the area in the 

 study of the geology, marine meteorology, oceanography, and of plant 

 and animal groups, each section including a selected bibliography as 



