OCEANOGRAPHY 203 



grouDds. albacore fishermen are using them, and albacore are appearing in the 

 fishery on the proper isotherm. 



Without belaboring this sea surface temi^erature thing too much I only wish to 

 point out some timing. Tlie Tuna Commission and POFI got underway in 1950 ; 

 by 1953 it was noted that phenomena in the Xorth Pacific were occurring in a 

 connected manner ; by 19.j5 surface tennperatures loolced lilve a useful researcli 

 tool to help explain these happenings ; by 1957 monthly surface isotherm charts 

 for the North I'acific had been developed into a useful research tool ; and in the 

 .spring of 19G0 biweekly isotherm charts were already being used by the alba- 

 core fi.shernien in their business at sea. 



One other example of the fast transition from basic science to applied science 

 in our area concerns bott(!m topography. Marine geologists are enormously in- 

 terested in the contours of the ocean bottom for a variety of reasons associated 

 with how the earth was put together. With the increasing perfection of elec- 

 tronic gear, it became possible to draw continuou.sly on a paper as the ship sailed 

 a quite exact picture of the sea bottom underneath it and to accurately enough 

 position the ■ship so as to have the component data for bottom topographer 

 charts. From 1950 on, as ocean research vessels plying south of California be- 

 came so equipited and their voyages more fre<iuent, patterns of subnuirine val- 

 leys, mountain ranges, plateaus, scarps, sharp sea mounts, and all the other de- 

 scriptive adjectives of the land began to appear. 



What is a sea mount to a marine geologist is very apt to be a tuna bank to a 

 tuna fisherman, if the temperature of the w;iter and the ocean current in the 

 area is right. This became sharply apparent in 195(> when cme of these research 

 vessels discovered a sea mount 1'K)-nd(l miles west of our normal fishing area, 

 a tuna biologist aboard (Belle Shimada) relayed this word by radio to the fleet, 

 and one of our vessels (the Xofrc Dame) made a round trip to it bringing 

 back a full load of tuna in 11 days oiit of port, a thing almost unheard of at 

 that time (since that time this tiny point in the far open Pacific has yielded 

 more than $15 million worth of tuna ) . 



This happeuf^tance threw us and the marine geologists together quickly. Dr. 

 Menard, the geologist at Scripps. found that our skippers had a lot of tuna banks 

 in the Eastern I'acific that he didn't know about and were sea mounts to him, 

 he had a lot of sea mounts and ridges that we didn't know about and might be 

 tuna banks to us. The trouble was that the whole business was in the line of 

 being trade secrets. Our data were the trade secrets of the skipper that had it; 

 his data were the trade secrets of the Navy which didn't want strange sub- 

 marines to have submerged navigation points to navigate from without surfacing 

 or .sea mounts they could hide in the shadow of. 



We got together some money for Dr. INIenard to hire a cartographer with which 

 to put all of this bottom data — classified or not — on charts. We wanted a series 

 of 24 charts to cover the whole sea bottom from California to Chile and 1.000 

 miles to sea. If he would attend to getting the charts i)ut together we would 

 take the chance of being able to declassify the data on them from our skippers 

 and the Navy. 



The skippers gave in first and were willing to pool their data : the Navy came 

 a little slower. In the meantime we ran out of money, but by this time the 

 Bureau of Commercial Fisheries was able to pick up the cost of the cartograjiher. 

 This spring the Navy got its classification problem squared away and could 

 release the charts which contained its data. As a consequence the first two of 

 these bottom topography (sea mount or tuna bank) charts have been published 

 and distributed to the fleet, and we can expect one a month until the whole 

 series is completed. 



Thus within 6 years of the date that Shimada Bank was discovered we should 

 have on each tuna vessel a reasonably complete set of charts of the bottom from 

 Point Conception, Calif., to Iqueque, Chile, and a thousand miles to sea. In the 

 meantime more research vessels with precise equipment are continuing to map 

 the valleys and mountains of the Pacific floor, and we can expec-t to have these 

 charts ready for revision in 3 oi- 4 years, together with charts of similar nature 

 extending furtlier to sea if we are then fishing there, which now becomes likely. 



While there has been a very considerable increase in knowledge of tb^ Eastern 

 Pacific Ocean in the past 10 years, which have been illustrated by the altove two 

 examples of sea surface temperature and bottom topography and could be illus- 

 trated by other examples dealing with the production of basic food in the area, 

 the intensive study of particular areas such as around a .sea mount, around an 

 oceanic island, or an area of seasonal upwelling such as in the Gulf of Tehuan- 



