US FWS Charles H. Gilbert (FWS 1003) was an American fisheries science research vessel in commission from 1952 to 1970 in the fleet of the United States Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service and from 1970 to 1973 in the fleet of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration as NOAAS Charles H. Gilbert. She was among the first U.S. fisheries science vessels to explore the central Pacific Ocean in search of commercially valuable populations of fish.
Originally designed for exploratory fishing using longline and live-bait techniques to determine the distribution of tuna in the central Pacific, her role evolved over the years as she underwent modifications to better support the research of fisheries scientists and marine biologists as their understanding of tuna biology increased, and by 1960 she had become a marine research station capable of longlining, trawling, transporting live bait, and gathering oceanographic data.Commercial Fisheries Review, December 1960, p. 29. In 1959, she became the only tuna-fishing vessel in the world outfitted with observation chambers incorporating underwater viewports, which gave embarked scientists an unprecedented ability to observe directly the behavior of tuna and bait fish in the water (rather than infer their behavior through statistical analysis ashore) and record the behavior for future study through the use of still photography and film. She also gathered meteorological data and even made gravimetric observations in support of geophysical analysis of the Earth.
During a long and active career, Charles H. Gilbert ranged widely through the central, northern, and eastern Pacific to study the Pacific tuna fishery, transport live bait from other locales to Hawaii so that it could be introduced in Hawaiian waters, and make her oceanographic, meteorological, and geophysical observations. From her home port at Honolulu, Hawaii, her 130 cruises took her southeast to the Marquesas Islands, south to Tahiti, southwest to New Caledonia, well to the northwest and north in the North Pacific, northeast as far as Oregon, and east to the coast of Mexico. In a 1967 summary of her contribution to fisheries science on the occasion of her 100th cruise, the a U.S. Fish and Wildlife official offered the opinion that virtually everything known about the distribution and behavior or tuna at that time was thanks to her operations.
After the conclusion of her United States Government service, the ship became a commercial fishing vessel, initially named MV Charles H. Gilbert and later MV Jade Alaska. She operated commercially until she sank in 2007.
Construction
In August 1947, the United States Congress authorized a new "Pacific Ocean Fishery Program" calling for the "investigation, exploration, and development of the high seas fisheries of the Territories and Island Possessions [of the United States] and intervening areas in the tropical and subtropical Pacific Ocean."Commercial Fisheries Review, October 1948, p. 27. The United States Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (which in 1956 would become the United States Fish and Wildlife Service) was responsible for carrying out the program, which was to be overseen by a new office, Pacific Ocean Fishery Investigations (POFI), under the direction of Oscar Elton Sette. In addition to the construction of the Pacific Ocean Fisheries Laboratory at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, and the development of a Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) docking and warehouse site at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Congress funded the conversion or construction of three ocean-going vessels to support POFI's work. During 1949 and 1950, these three vessels joined the Fish and Wildlife Service fleet as , , and . However, the FWS retired Henry O'Malley in early 1951 due to a need for cost-prohibitive repairs, reducing POFI's fleet to two vessels.Commercial Fisheries Review, March 1951, p. 19.
Constructed for use by POFI, Charles H. Gilbert was a (sources give both lengths)Commercial Fisheries Review, December 1960, p. 29, gives her length in 1960 as and notes that she as lengthened by in 1953, indicating that her original length in 1952 was . steel-hulled research and experimental fishing vessel especially designed for use in investigating tuna fisheries in the mid-Pacific Ocean.Commercial Fisheries Review, July 1952, p. 30. She was outfitted for longline fishing, a method Japanese fishermen had used for tuna fishing for centuries and which the FWS hoped to adapt to Western mechanical fishing techniques, in contrast to the Japanese method of longlining by hand.Commercial Fisheries Review, September 1952, p. 66. The FWS accepted her at Tacoma, Washington, on 30 April 1952,Commercial Fisheries Review, June 1952, p. 29. returning POFI to its authorized strength of three research vessels, and assigned her the hull number FWS 1003.Commercial Fisheries Review, February 1963, photograph of Charles H. Gilbert showing hull number on bow, p. 22.
Service history 1950s 1952
Upon acceptance by the FWS, Charles H. Gilbert proceeded immediately to San Diego, California. She departed San Diego on 20 May 1952 for her first FWS cruise, an experimental fishing cruise across the equator between 120 degrees and 130 degrees West longitude to test a hypothesis POFI scientists had developed from the study of oceanographic data that significant tuna stocks existed eastward from the Hawaiian Islands all the way to the coast of Central America. She first proceeded south along 120 degrees West longitude, longlining every from a point north of the equator to a point south of it. She then moved to 130 degrees West longitude and fished northward, following the same procedure. She found good fishing north of the equator, catching tuna at twice the rate that commercial fisherman did when longlining around Hawaii, with yellowfin tuna predominating in the southern two-thirds of the zone and bigeye tuna in the northern third, and the FWS assessed that no vessel had ever caught yellowfin and bigeye tuna so far from shore before. Charles H. Gilbert′s exploration resulted in the discovery of a new Eastern Pacific tuna fishery, supporting the POFI hypothesis by demonstrating an abundance of tuna as far as east of Hawaii and indicating a need for further investigation of areas to the east and west of where she fished. She concluded her cruise with her arrival for the first time at her home port at the POFI docking facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 19 June 1952, having made a maiden voyage of during the cruise.
During her third cruise, which she completed with her return to Pearl Harbor on 14 November 1952, Charles H. Gilbert operated in conjunction with a United States Navy flying boat to study the effectiveness of using aircraft to assist ships in scouting for tuna in the central Hawaiian area.Commercial Fisheries Review, December 1952, p. 22. She successfully captured and held bait fish, and electronarcosis tests she conducted on small bonefish, barracudas, puffers, and halfbeaks indicated wide variations between species, fish of different sizes, and individual fish. She battled winds of fresh gale force, and this unfavorable weather combined with an apparent seasonal scarcity of fish and limitations of her design prevented her from carrying out many of her cruise objectives. but what she did accomplish suggested that aerial scouting might prove feasible under better weather conditions.
Charles H. Gilbert quickly put back to sea for her fourth cruise, and on 19 November 1952 she collected seawater samples off Waianae, Oahu, Hawaii, from depths of , , and , both to test a method of freezing seawater to preserve phosphates for later study ashore and to determine the rate of change of phosphate content over a few hours after collection of a sample. She returned to Pearl Harbor on 30 November 1952.
Charles H. Gilbert again experimented with methods of scouting for tuna around the Hawaiian Islands during her sixth cruise, which lasted from 9 to 19 December 1952.Commercial Fisheries Review, February 1953, p. 43. She proceeded due south from Pearl Harbor, then headed due east to the island of Hawaii, and after operating there for five days proceeded along the northern side of the Hawaiian Islands to Kauai and Niihau. She found schools of small skipjack tuna south of Oahu, around the island of Hawaii, off Maui and Molokai, and near Niihau, and she caught fish south of Oahu and off Niihau.Commercial Fisheries Review, February 1953, p. 44. She again cooperated with aircraft, which operated from Naval Air Station Barbers Point on Oahu and made scouting flights on 12 and 19 December along Charles H. Gilbert′s course and north to 23 degrees 40 minutes North. Charles H. Gilbert and the aircraft had equal success in sighting schools of tuna in the same area. Difficulty in capturing bait fish interfered with her fishing efforts, but she did catch 134 skipjack and saved some of them for further study of their diets, breeding population, and growth patterns, and she made morphometric analyses of some of them. She also harpooned a porpoise and collected its carcass for study. In addition, she made seabird observations, noting a relative absence of shearwaters and the presence of jaegers and other skuas – never recorded in the mid-Pacific prior to 1952 – which suggested irregular meteorological and hydrographic patterns. She made 83 bathythermograph casts, operated her fish finder continuously to detect deep-swimming creatures, and noted a temperature inversion in Hilo Bay which FWS scientists thought could explain a lack of vitality in the nehu bait fish population over the preceding month.
1953
Charles H. Gilbert again scouted the Hawaiian Islands area for tuna during her seventh cruise. which she completed on 14 February 1953Commercial Fisheries Review, March 1953, p. 37. after 19 days at sea.Commercial Fisheries Review, April 1953, p. 24. It was her third such cruise, conducted as part of an FWS effort to investigate the seasonal distribution of tuna off Hawaii and where they migrated to during the winter in the hope of gathering information that would allow the expansion of the Hawaii commercial tuna industry into unfished areas.Commercial Fisheries Review, March 1953, pp. 37–38. She found what the FWS described as a "surprising" number of yellowfin and skipjack west of the islands of Hawaii and Lanai out to offshore, suggesting a systematic northeasterly movement of tuna into the waters south of the islands. She also carried out preliminary experiments with chemical fish attractants (derived from fish extracts and mixed with fluorescein) in place of live bait; the FWS hoped that the use of such attractants would have wide application off Hawaii and the United States West Coast, although Charles H. Gilbert′s crew noted no reaction by the fish. In addition, she brought back some live, small yellowfin for fish-attractant experiments at the University of Hawaii research station at Coconut Island off Oahu and collected a number of unusual or rare biological specimens, including of the snake mackerel made famous by the 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition. She experimented with the use of a hydrophone and recording equipment to detect tuna, although a hydrophone failure prevented her from trying it in the one area she found skipjack in abundance. An experiment with aeration in live bait tanks using compressed air was more successful, allowing her to keep bait alive in her tanks while hove-to.