202 OCEANOGRAPHY 



getting these data edited, programed for the machine, and put into shape to 

 study has been formidable and time consuming. 



This program liad liardly gotten underway, liowever, before it began to pro- 

 foundly affect tlie design and practice of fishery oceanography on this coast. 

 These numeroas data proved conclusively that ^A'hat this science needefl was 

 time-space data : that is continuous or rei)eated observations of what was 

 going on at one point in tlie ocean repeated simultaneously at numerous key 

 points in the ocean. 



This sort of thing could not be done from research boats at sea. In the 

 first place getting enough data to be intelligible by thi.s means would be pro- 

 hibitively expensive. In the second place the research boat could not take 

 observations at the same time at widely separated points in the ocean. During 

 the time it took to stream from one point to another the mobile, flowing, ever- 

 changing ocean was different. Tide gage stations and thermographs at i)oints 

 along shore were fine source.s of such time series data, but there was so much 

 u[)welling along shore, and other parochial changes created by the friction of 

 the ocean against tlip land, that the shore station didn't measure very well 

 what was happening 20 miles (or 200 miles) at sea. 



Accordingly, development was started on moored buoys that could be anchored 

 far at sea in 2,.")(M) fathf)ms of water and which would automatically and con- 

 tinually record a variety of oceanogra])hic mea.surements, be reasonalble in cost, 

 and capable of being recovered, monitored, or read at monthly or 6-month 

 intervals. 



Such moored buoys have not had all the Inigs worked out of them yet, but 

 production models are obviously not too far away. This prospei^'t has terrified 

 the oceanographers almost more than the absence of data. When a dozen re- 

 search ships bring in more data from the sea than can be assimilated in a year 

 or two what will happen when 50 of the.se moored monsters begin turning out 

 hourly readings of temperatures at 5 depths around the clock, 3().5 days a year, 

 besides such other parameters as salinity, current, wind pressure, wind velocity, 

 etc. ? 



It was the prospect of tliis in the near future which led to the oceanographer's 

 requesting a national "memory" bank for oceanographic data of this sort, into 

 which all such data can he fed automatically as it arrives, and from which an 

 individual scientist can obtain a "read-out" of all data available on the point 

 he is investigating and that he can, in turn, program through his electronic 

 machines and manipiilate so as to wring information out of tliem. 



While this all may sound as if it is a goori distance away from tuna fishing 

 it is not. Sette had hardly gotten set up with his first 5 million cards before 

 his successor at POFI, Murphy, who had been given the job of investigating the 

 wliereabouts of alba core tuna in tlie Xorth Pacific after they left the sea.sonal 

 fishing grounds, conceived the idea of doing this by comparing the geographic 

 appearance of albacore as found by sightings and catches with sea siirface tem- 

 peratures. He began doing this by taking the daily observations for the whole 

 north Pacific off the Weather Bureau's pipeline in Honolulu and plotting them 

 Tip into monthly charts of Lsotherms. 



This was, as far as he was concerned, simply a research tool and he was not 

 too particular about how fast he got his niionthly charts compiled but, as lia-s be- 

 come ciistomary in Pacific Ocean research, when he did get a chart completed he 

 sent copies of it arcmnd to all his <-olleagues. Vei-y (juickly two things became 

 plain: (1) The ocean surface temperature had a i>iittern to it which was related 

 to the appearance and aggregation of albacore. and (2) this (n-ean temperature 

 pattern changed slowly so that one could predict reasonaltly well from the pattern 

 of last numth's isotherms, what their pattern would be next month, or even 

 the month after, and thus have another tool with which to locate fish. 



This research tool looked to have useful coiniotations for us fishermen. In the 

 meantime other researchers had ascertained that al)ont 90 i>ercent of all alba- 

 core catches were made where the sea surface temperatureis were between .~8' 

 and 60° F., with the median at 62° at the beginniTig of the season and slojnng 

 off to nearer .">H^ at the end of the season. I may .say that similar studies in- 

 dicate sn^all skii>.iack catches in waters warmer tlian 83° F. and the same for 

 yellowfin in waters warmer than 8.1° F. 



Accordingly, we industry people asked the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries to 

 develop this research tool into a fishing tool. Starting at the first of this year, its 

 San Die^o I.aboratory began publishing these surface temperature charts for 

 the northeast Pacific at each month end and distributing them to the trade. 

 Now, additionally, they are publishing 2-week charts covering the albacore 



