US FWS Hugh M. Smith was an American fisheries science research vessel in commission from 1949 to 1959 in the fleet of the United States Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service. She was among the first U.S. fisheries science vessels to explore the central Pacific Ocean in search of commercially valuable populations of fish. Prior to her time in the Fish and Wildlife Service, the vessel was in commission in the United States Navy as the patrol vessel USS YP-635. After her Fish and Wildlife Service career ended, she was leased to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1959 to 1963, then operated in American Samoa during the mid-1960s, and finally served the Philippine Merchant Marine Academy as the laboratory training ship Habagat from 1965 until she capsized in a storm in the late 1970s.
U.S. Navy
Construction The Ballard Marine Railway Company built the vessel as the U.S. Navy patrol boat YP-635 at Seattle, Washington, in 1945. As completed, she was listed as 117 feet (36 m) in length, with a displacement of 403 tons.
Service history The vessel was commissioned into U.S. Navy service as USS YP-635 near the end of World War II in May 1945. The war ended in August 1945, and sometime afterward YP-635 was decommissioned and laid up in reserve.
Honors and awards YP-635 received the following awards for her World War II service:
American Campaign Medal World War II Victory Medal
Fish and Wildlife Service In August 1947, the United States Congress authorized a new Pacific Ocean Fishery Program calling for the "investigation, exploration, and development of the high seas fisheries of the Territories and Island Possessions [of the United States] and intervening areas in the tropical and subtropical Pacific Ocean." The United States Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (which in 1956 would become the United States Fish and Wildlife Service) was responsible for carrying out the program, which was to be overseen by a new Pacific Ocean Fishery Investigation (POFI) under the direction of Oscar Elton Sette. In addition to the construction of the Pacific Ocean Fisheries Laboratory at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu in the Territory of Hawaii and the development of a Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) docking and warehouse site at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Congress funded the conversion or construction of three ocean-going vessels to support POFI's work. During 1949 and 1950, these three vessels joined the Fish and Wildlife Service fleet as US FWS Henry O'Malley, US FWS Hugh M. Smith, and US FWS John R. Manning.
Acquisition, conversion, and commissioning The U.S. Navy transferred YP-635 to the FWS in November 1948. She then underwent conversion into a fisheries science research vessel. Her conversion was completed in Tacoma, Washington, in November 1949, and the FWS commissioned her that month as US FWS Hugh M. Smith, named for Hugh McCormick Smith (1865–1941), who led the United States Bureau of Fisheries as the Commissioner of Fisheries from 1913 to 1922. Unlike the other two POFI vessels, Henry O'Malley and John R. Manning, which were fitted out as exploratory fishing vessels, Hugh M. Smith was configured as a biological and oceanographic research vessel, intended to study the life histories and habits of the tunas of the central Pacific Ocean. As converted, Hugh M. Smith was equipped with laboratory facilities, an oceanographic winch for use in studying plankton and water temperature, live bait tanks, refrigerated holds, and an auxiliary propulsion motor that allowed her to operate at the low speeds necessary to carry out many of her scientific activities. Her fishing gear included a 480-by-36-foot (146 by 11 m) bait net, a 240-by-18-foot (73.2 by 5.5 m) bait net, and a 90-by-6-foot (27.4 by 1.8 m) bait net.
Service history
1949 Hugh M. Smith departed Seattle on 15 November 1949 bound for Honolulu, the second of the three fisheries research vessels the FWS assigned to POFI to enter service. After arriving in Hawaii, she put back to sea on 8 December 1949 for her first FWS cruise, a 16-day shakedown cruise in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands to test her equipment — including special equipment for catching tuna, gathering fish eggs, fish larvae, and other biological materials, and taking water samples at depth — and train her crew in fisheries research work. She operated south of Maui and off the Kona Coast of the island of Hawaii, and took a series of observations of ocean currents — which were believed to influence the occurrence of tuna — at stations extending from the coast of the island of Hawaii to a point 120 nautical miles (220 km; 140 mi) to the southwest .
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