From 1940 to 1970, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service operated a fleet of seagoing vessels. The fleet included fisheries science research ships, fishery patrol vessels, and cargo liners.
The United States Fish Commission operated a small fleet of research ships and fish-culture vessels. Its successor agency, the Bureau of Fisheries, inherited these in 1903, and then greatly expanded its fleet of seagoing vessels, including both patrol vessels for fishery enforcement in the Territory of Alaska and a cargo liner â known as the "Pribilof tender" â to provide transportation for passengers and haul cargo to, from, and between the Pribilof Islands. In the 1930s, the Bureau of Biological Survey operated a vessel of its own, Brown Bear. Upon its creation in 1940, the FWS inherited the BOF's fleet and Brown Bear.
By 1940, no fisheries research vessels remained in commission, the BOF having decommissioned the last one, , in 1932; only in the late 1940s did the FWS begin to commission new research ships. Although between 1871 and 1940 the Fish Commission and BOF had never had more than three fisheries research ships in commission at the same time â and had three in commission simultaneously only in two years out of their entire combined history â by March 1950, the FWS fleet included 11 seagoing fisheries research and exploratory fishing vessels either in service or under construction, and its fishery enforcement force in the Territory of Alaska included 29 patrol vessels and about 100 speedboats, as well as 20 airplanes. In the 1956 reorganization that created the USFWS, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (BCF) assumed the responsibility within the USFWS for the operation of the seagoing vessels of the fleet.
Both before and after the FWS became the USFWS in 1956, ships of its fleet used the prefix while in commission. The BOF usually named its ships after aquatic birds and ships the FWS inherited from the BOF in 1940 retained those names in FWS service. However, the FWS/USFWS thereafter usually named vessels it acquired after people who were notable in the history of fisheries and fisheries science.
The USFWS continued fishery enforcement in Alaska until after Alaska became a state in January 1959, but by 1960 had turned over enforcement responsibilities and some of the associated vessels to the Government of Alaska as the latter assumed the responsibility for fishery enforcement in its waters. The USFWS continued to operate fisheries research ships and the Pribilof tender until the BCF's seagoing fleet was transferred to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), an element of NOAA, upon the creation of NOAA on October 3, 1970. Although the NMFS continued to operate the Pribilof tender until 1975, the rest of the ships were transferred from the NMFS to a unified NOAA fleet during 1972 and 1973. The modern NOAA fleet therefore traces its ancestry in part to the USFWS fleet operated by the BCF.