William Francis Thompson and the dawn of marine fisheries research in California

Marine Fisheries Review, Spring, 2001 by J. Richard Dunn

Harlan Holmes left the commission in 1922 to join the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. He spent the remainder of his career with the Federal agency, stationed in the Pacific Northwest, and became a well-known figure in salmon research on the Columbia River (Cattell, 1955).

William Scofield spent 37 years with the California Department of Fish and Game. He became director of the California State Fisheries Laboratory in 1925, upon Thompson's departure from the state agency. He served as laboratory director for nearly 17 years and was particularly noted for his knowledge of the fishing industry (Roedel, 1967).

William Herrington left the state agency to join Thompson at the International Fisheries Commission where he stayed from 1927 to 1930. He then worked for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries from 1930 to 1947 and later (from 1951 to 1966) was the U.S. State Department Fishery Attache to Japan (Anonymous, 1971). See also the Thompson diary for 1924-25, black leather 3-ring binder, about 18 by 26-centimeters, listing Herrington as an employee. Only diary entries for 24 November 1924-February 1925 are present in the files of the International Pacific Halibut Commission.

(15) Harvests in that era were listed in U.S. tons (2,000 lb.), not metric tons.

(16) See the next page for Footnote 16. The sardine fishery reached its apogee in 1936-37, only to collapse in the early 1950's (Radovich, 1982).

(17) Thompson's (1919b) article on the "proposed investigation of the sardine" centered on five questions: "1) Will depletion occur?; 2) Are there great natural fluctuations in abundance, or quality, other than those of depletion?; 3) Is it possible to foretell fluctuations?, 4) Do sardines migrate from one region to another?; and 5) If depletion should occur, what measures for protection should be adopted? He described the kinds of data needed to answer these questions, and for the sardine he wanted: 1) Commercial catch of sardines by vessel type, gear, and fishing area; 2) Composition in and variation of catch by size and age; 3) Spawning season and areas; 4)Yearly abundance of young sardines and knowledge of their early life history; and 5) Age and rate of growth as well as knowledge of the "racial" differences of stocks, if any (Thompson, 1919b).

(18) Thompson described his research plans in various issue of the commission's quarterly publication, but most often he directed his writing toward a lay audience (e.g. Thompson, 1920a, 1921a, b). He also published a more scholarly description of his methods of fisheries research (Thompson, 1919b).

(19) Thompson recorded in the Thompson family history a humorous episode in 1917 that apparently plagued his early scientific group as they began their statistical analysis of data. He wrote: "But unfortunately we had at that time no adding machines or calculators or tabulating systems, and were seemingly unable to convince the Sacramento authorities that they were needed. We received an answer to our request for an adding machine, an inquiry as to why a biologist needed such a machine! My wife and I, and later helpers, tried valiantly to add our figures mentally from tables copied in longhand; we ended with what seems to me a confused mess of personal notes and memoranda which made no sense at all as a report. We did not succeed in setting this in order because of deep involvement in sardine problems and my move in 1924 to Seattle to direct the new International Halibut Commission" (Thompson, J. B. manuscr. III: 72, see footnote 1).