USFS Pelican was an American fisheries science research ship and fishery patrol vessel that operated along the United States East Coast and the United States Gulf Coast and in the waters of the Territory of Alaska. She was part of the United States Bureau of Fisheries (BOF) fleet from 1930 to 1940. She then served as US FWS Pelican in the fleet of the Fish and Wildlife Service – which in 1956 became the United States Fish and Wildlife Service – from 1940 to 1958. She served as a fishery patrol vessel while on loan to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife from 1958 to 1970, then briefly returned to the Fish and Wildlife Service's successor agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service. Her United States Government service ended when she was sold into private hands in 1972, and she remained extant as of 2018.
Bureau of Fisheries
Construction and characteristics Seattle, Washington, naval architect Harold Cornelius Hanson designed a number of vessels for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and Pelican was among them. He designed her to meet a BOF requirement for a research vessel which could conduct scientific work on the continental shelf along the United States East Coast at depths of up to 600 feet (183 m). The resulting design was nearly identical to that of the BOF fishery patrol vessel USFS Teal – which Hanson also designed and which had joined the BOF fleet in 1927 – except for a 6-foot (1.8 m) extension to the after portion of her deckhouse to accommodate an on-board fisheries science laboratory. Her deckhouse also housed the captain′s room, a radio room, and the crew's mess; the captain's room included a chart table. Some of the deckhouse compartments were separated from one another, with self-sealing, high-threshold doors to her outer side decks providing access between them. She was of heavily planked construction; the planks were made of U.S. East Coast longleaf yellow pine on a white oak frame with Douglas fir decking. Her 150-horsepower (112 kW) six-cylinder direct-reversible Winton diesel engine was mounted on four 12-by-20-inch (30 by 51 cm) wooden timbers. An air compressor started the engine. Boat Harbor Marine Railway in Newport News, Virginia, constructed Pelican and launched her in 1930. She quickly completed fitting-out and was commissioned into service with the BOF fleet the same year.
Operational history Upon commissioning in 1930, Pelican proceeded immediately to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where she replaced the BOF vessel USFS Gannet in performing fish culture work at the BOF's Boothbay Harbor station. She spent most of 1932 supporting a special International Passamaquoddy Fisheries Commission study of the potential for the construction of proposed power dams in Cobscook Bay and Passamaquoddy Bay on the coast of Maine to harm the area's food fish populations. She completed that work on 17 October 1932, and in 1933 took part in fishery studies in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. She was taken out of service later in 1933. While out of service, Pelican underwent overhaul and modifications, including a major overhaul of her engine at Portland, Maine. After her engine overhaul was complete, Pelican underwent repairs and alterations at Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in 1936, including the installation of deck fittings, a 25-kilowatt (34 hp) electric generator, and a hydrographic winch with 5,000 feet (1,524 m) of steel cable for oceanographic work. Pelican returned to service in 1937, departing Fairhaven on 10 January 1937 bound for a new assignment in the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way, she stopped at the United States Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay in Baltimore, Maryland, where the United States Coast Guard provided her with a radio and an electric generator to power it, which Coast Guard personnel installed aboard her. She then moved on to Brunswick, Georgia, where she arrived on 22 January 1937. There she received additional minor alterations and took aboard fishing gear and hydrographic equipment. She departed Brunswick on 30 January 1937 bound for New Orleans, Louisiana. Although her small size limited her to operations within 100 nautical miles (190 km; 120 mi) of the United States Gulf Coast and precluded lengthy stays at sea, Pelican arrived at New Orleans well equipped for deep-water hydrographic and biological surveys thanks to the work performed on her at Fairhaven, Curtis Bay, and Brunswick. She set to work in 1937 on an investigation of shrimp populations in the Gulf of Mexico, which she continued until 1940. She operated all along the U.S. Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas during these years, using exploratory offshore trawling, plankton hauls, and analyses of seawater salinity and geological bottom core samples to develop a scientific understanding of shrimp biology in the hope of establishing a viable commercial shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico that could make up for declining shrimp populations in the Atlantic Ocean. Searching for evidence to support a theory that shrimp move to deeper waters in the winter after disappearing in the autumn from fishing grounds closer to shore, Pelican found brown shrimp (Farfantepenaeus aztecus) in deeper water off the coast of Louisiana in 1938; this discovery allowed the development of a viable commercial shrimp-fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico. By early 1940, she had expanded her shrimp investigation into the Atlantic Ocean off the southeastern United States, conducting shrimp surveys along the coast between Florida and North Carolina.
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