Fishing Back When: Article from the 1968 Yearbook of National Fisherman

Development of new gear and improvement of existing techniques continued to keep pace with the fishing industry during 1967.

Since finding fish is the first thing that men and boats must do when they head for deep water, the DS400 "Expander" Vertical Fish Finder introduced by Western Marine Electronics, also known as Wesmar, will be a help. The Expander offers a range up to 400 fathoms and has been designed exclusively for vessels engaged in mid and deep-water trawling.

The system houses two cathode ray (radar) tubes for the presentation and interpretation of targets.

The main display is presented on a 5'' x 7'' CRT. This is a recording tube with a display similar to the conventional wet or dry recorders, although no paper is used. The second is a vertical indicator, non-recording CRT, which provides a more detailed investigation of fish under the vessel. With the expander feature, a school of fish one fathom off the bottom can appear two to 10 fathoms off the bottom by adjustment of the controls.

A Depth Telemetry System, developed by Standard Controls, Inc. of Seattle, indicates that it might be a big help to trawlers who want to know just how deep the net is when it isn't on the bottom and isn't on the surface. The system consists of a pressure-sensing device encased in a 2'' cylinder. If desired, the cylinder is attached to the trawl at the footrope, headrope, or even on the motherboard. It does not have to be disassembled as it comes aboard with the net at any other time.
Information from the sensor is transmitted to a readout on deck through the trawl cable itself, which contains six conducting wires at its core. The designers claim that other information, such as temperature and even strain on the net, could be indicated by modifying the sensor slightly and reading instruments on deck. Company officials point out that a skipper, after a few days of familiarization with the instrument on his own vessel, would be able to judge fairly accurately how many fish were in his trawl without retrieving his gear.

The skipper would always know how deep his net was and could possibly correlate water temperatures with fishing conditions.

A device that may change the face of the entire King crab fishing industry was announced in the October 1967 issue of National Fisherman. This is a King crab pot launcher and is the brainchild of Ed Grabowski, Highline skipper of the King crabber North Sea, working out of Seattle. The inventor developed the launcher and retriever primarily because he decided that a 300-1b. pot with an additional 800-1200 Ibs. of crab in it, swinging back and forth over a deck at the end of a line in a heavy sea, presented a hazard to crew members on deck.

So he developed a method whereby the pot is held firmly in a mechanical device from when it leaves the water full of crab until it re-enters the water after being emptied and rebait. With the new device, the pot is lifted from the bottom with a single line running to the bottom of the pot frame. Thus, when the pot is lifted, it hangs vertically in the water. The pot warp runs through two fairleads at the top of the pot retriever, and the lifting process guides the pot into the receiver. Once in the receiver, the pot is held firmly by two gravity-actuated ratchets until it has been lifted and brought inboard.

Grabowski, who has applied for a patent, has tested his device and says it works successfully. During the 1965-66 and 1966-67 seasons, Grabowski's boat set high records by hauling in more than 5 million pounds of King crab, and he claims the device should increase his haul during the current season. After further tests, Grabowski's device will be manufactured by the Rowe Machinery Co. of Seattle.

During the year, Travaco Laboratories announced the development of a new bilge cleaner in Chelsea, Mass. The manufacturer says the cleaner will emulsify and break down oil into microscopic particles 500 times smaller than conventional types. It is claimed that it can stay in suspension longer,
so that it can be pumped overboard without clogging pumps or filter screens.

Travaco Bilge Cleaner will instantly emulsify "caked on" sludge, diesel fuel, gas and bilge water because the magnetic affinity with which oil clings to the bilge is neutralized, the Travaco Co. says. The new product cleans with the roll of the boat. 

In Columbus, Ohio, the Hume Corp. has been looking into the problem of protection for commercial fish tanks. Hume is the producer of Glass-flake coatings, which are increasingly used in the marine industry. Sprayed on, the coating of glass flakes in a polyester resin provides a solid barrier 30 mils or more thick, with minimal permeability to vapor particles. The resulting smoothing surface is said to be easily cleaned by detergents or steam and to have a life of 5-10 years.

A federal ocean buoy system, designed to help fishermen find more fertile grounds and the Coast Guard to improve its aid to navigation, is the goal of a new research study sponsored by the Interagency Committee on Oceanography (ICO). Basically, the study is intended to determine the needs for oceanographic and marine weather information, which buoy systems can best acquire, and to make plans for these systems.

Three specific programs are underway with the Coast Guard for the use of buoys other than aids to navigation:

1. A network of about eight buoys is required on Newfoundland's Grand Banks to telemeter surface and subsurface temperature and current data for ice patrol analysis.
2. The Coast Guard is planning the establishment of a three-buoy temperature and current measuring system in the vicinity of each of the 10 offshore light stations.
3. The Coast Guard plans to use large buoys in lieu of lightships and offshore stations as unmanned aids to navigation. Oceanographic and meteorological sensor systems are included in the planning of such buoys.

The requirements of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (BCF) for buoy systems are centered on the need to gather data for the prediction of the pattern of fish migrations, a matter of abiding interest to every boat that earns its livelihood from the sea. Present evidence indicates that fish migrations are sensitive to temperatures. Variations in the annual harvest of a single fish species have been in the neighborhood of $50 million as a result of the inability to assess fish migration patterns properly.

The BCF, as part of its own research on fisheries and its services to the fishing industry, requires real-time synoptic oceanographic information. Its present effort is limited to 10 free-floating buoys with limited-range telemetering capabilities.

During the year, the Coast Guard, the Sandy Hook Marine Laboratory of the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries, and the Committee for Scientific Exploration of the Atlantic Shelf worked on a project calculated to determine the relationship between surface temperatures and the distribution of migratory game fish.

A typical "search mission" is flown monthly in a Coast Guard Grumman amphibian working out of Elizabeth City, N.C. Cruising at 120 knots at an altitude of only 500', the aircraft works over a huge grid covering 700 miles between Currituck Beach and Winter Quarter Shoals off Assateague Island, Va.

While the plane is in flight, an infrared thermometer set on a camera tripod at the aircraft's port stern hatch starts working as soon as the Grumman is airborne. The thermometer looks like a truncated coffee can, and its electronic equipment scans the water continuously. A crewman stands beside the equipment, watching for marine life of any kind, especially fish. Whatever he sees, if only sargassum, is marked by hand on a strip of paper alongside the temperature reading for that moment.
Whenever a specified station within the flight pattern is at hand, the crewman throws from the hatch five drift bottles containing red business-reply to cards and bundles of five bottom drifters. The bottom drifters somewhat resemble artificial settles, with plastic semi-buoyant discs for heads and weighted steps. A ring salt cake holds the five stems together in the bundle until it dissolves in the water and releases them to sink almost to the bottom.

The weighted stems touch the bottom, and the heads or "flowers" keep them upright to bob along with bottom currents. Finders of the bottles or drifters can get 50¢ apiece for returning them to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Mass., where they are punch-carded and studied. When its mission is completed, the aircraft’s onboard gear and data are shipped to Sandy Hook for study and analysis.

This is when they find out if what they're doing is gaining on the problem of finding ways to improve fishing, whether for sport or for a living, by predicting the movements of fish from their temperature tolerances.

Circulation patterns for surface and bottom currents are being determined from returns from the 425 bottles and bottom drifters dropped each month. About 13 percent of the cards in the bottles and 22 percent of the drifters are heard from. What with developments in gear and increased emphasis on electronic methods, there may well come a time when a fish doesn't have a chance.