Dean C. Allard, now retired, was head of the U.S. Navy
History Center.
|
|
by Dean C. Allard
Reprint from Marine Fisheries Review
Vol. 61. No. 4, 1999
Spencer Fullerton Baird (Fig. 1), a noted systematic zoologist
and builder of scientific
Figure
1 - Spencer F. Baird, founder and first Commissioner of
the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries and second Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution.
|
institutions
in 19th century America, persuaded the U.S. Congress to establish
the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries (1)
in March 1871. At that time, Baird was Assistant Secretary of
the Smithsonian Institution. Following the death of Joseph Henry
in 1878, he became head of the institution, a position he held
until his own demise in 1887. In addition to his many duties as
a Smithsonian of-cial, including his prominent role in developing
the Smithsonian's Federally funded National Museum as the repository
for governmental scientific collections, Baird directed the Fish
Commission from 1871 until 1887.
The Fish Commission's original mission was to determine the reasons
and remedies for the apparent decline of American fisheries off
southern New England as well as other parts of the United States.
In 1872, Congress further directed the Commission to begin a large
fish hatching program aimed at increasing the supply of American
food fish.
Five years later, Baird served as the government's chief scientific
witness during an international arbitration held at Halifax, Nova
Scotia, Can., to determine how much the United States owed for
the rights granted in the 1871 Treaty of Washington to fish in
the territorial waters of Canada and Newfoundland.
From the U.S. point of view, the $5.5 million award that the Halifax
tribunal granted to Canada and Newfoundland was shockingly unjust
and suggested that the fishing treaty should not be renewed when
it expired in 1885. Another reaction was Spencer Baird’s
decision to initiate a Fish Commission program that gave direct
aid to the nation’s commercial fisheries, including efforts
to locate new fishing grounds that were as far removed from British
North America as possible (Goode, 1883:177–178; Allard,
1978:180–238).
While pursuing these utilitarian programs, Baird’s Commission
devoted each summer to basic biological and physical investigations
of the northwest Atlantic. Initially, Baird’s pioneering
surveys concentrated on the coastal waters of New England. The
village of Woods Hole, Mass., was the base for this work in 1871
and 1875 and in the years following 1881. But, during the first
decade of the Commission’s work, as Baird extended his investigation
to cover most of New England’s continental shelf, he established
his laboratory at a number of other locations in the region, ranging
from Noank, Conn., to Eastport, Maine.
Baird repeatedly argued that the basic knowledge accumulated through
his investigations was essential for the solution of practical
fishery problems (Allard, 1978:164–179). But some contemporary
observers argued that scientific work, including the gathering
of massive collections of specimens for Baird’s National
Museum in Washington, received undue emphasis by the Fish Commission
(U.S. Congress, 1889:544–545, 655–656).
The objectives of the Fish Commission lay behind Spencer Baird’s
1880 request to Congress for the ship that became known as Albatross
(Fig. 2). American officials, still smarting from the Halifax
award of 1877, recognized the importance of locating new banks
and improving the productivity of existing grounds used by American
fishermen. It is not surprising, therefore, that, in his initial
lobbying with Congress, Baird stressed the need for a ship that
could undertake exploratory fishing (USFC, 1884:xxiv).
In addition, Baird very much had in mind the value of the Albatross
in exploring the deep waters of the Northwest Atlantic where an
exciting new frontier of scientific discovery beckoned (Fig. 3).
Of initial interest was a region of relatively warm water on the
edge of the Continental Shelf that the Fish Commission called
Gulf Stream Slope. The abyssal waters extending seaward of this
area soon became
|
|
1 