NOAA Ship John N. Cobb (R 552) was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel in commission from 1970 to 2008. She was named for John Nathan Cobb and was the oldest commissioned ship in the NOAA fleet when she was decommissioned, having previously served in the United States Department of the Interior′s Fish and Wildlife Service from 1950 to 1956 and in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service′s Bureau of Commercial Fisheries from 1956 to 1970 as US FWS John N. Cobb (FWS 1601).
Construction and commissioning W. C. Nickum and Sons designed John N. Cobb based on a West Coast purse-seiner design. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) funded her construction using US$150,000 ifrom the sale of the FWS fisheries research vessel Washington, and the Western Boatbuilding Company constructed her in Tacoma, Washington. She was launched on 16 January 1950 and commissioned as US FWS John N. Cobb (FWS 1601) on 18 February 1950.
Technical characteristics John N. Cobb had a wooden hull. As originally constructed, she was designed for exploratory fishing cruises and fishing gear research and development, with trawling, longlining, gillnetting, and oceanographic sampling capabilities. When commissioned in 1950, she had then-modern navigational equipment, including radar, a LORAN navigation system, depth finders, and an electro-mechanical steering system. John N. Cobb had a total of 13 bunks, and her mess room could serve eight personnel at a time. During her NOAA service, she carried a complement of two NOAA Corps officers, two licensed engineers, and four other crew members, and could accommodate up to four scientists. Her deck equipment featured three winches and one boom crane. This equipment gave John N. Cobb a lifting capacity of up to 4,800 pounds (2,200 kg) as well as 7,200 feet (2,200 m) of cable that could pull up to 14,000 pounds (6,400 kg). During her NOAA years, in support of her primary mission of fishery and living marine resource research for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) division of NOAA, John N. Cobb was equipped with a shallow-water echo sounder, fishfinder, forward-looking sonar, and net sonde. She had a single laboratory of 150 square feet (14 m2). She carried a 17-foot (5.2 m) fiberglass boat for utility and rescue purposes. She could conduct bottom trawls down to depths of over 300 fathoms (1,800 ft; 550 m).
Operational history
Fish and Wildlife Service Assigned Seattle, Washington, as her home port, John N. Cobb made her first cruise in March and April 1950, operating off Alaska in search of commercially useful populations of shellfish, especially shrimp. From June to September 1950, she operated in the Pacific Ocean off Alaska, Oregon, and Washington looking for commercially exploitable albacore populations. In August 1950, her crew discovered a seamount rising 9,600 feet (2,926 m) from the sea bottom to 132 feet (40.2 m) below the sea's surface 270 nautical miles (500 km; 310 mi) off the coast of Washington; the seamount later was named Cobb Seamount. In 1953, John N. Cobb cruised off the Aleutian Islands, conducting a preliminary search for salmon populations and developing fishing techniques that would allow the successful use of gill nets in the open ocean. Later in 1953, she explored Prince William Sound off Alaska to assess the availability of herring there. In 1955, she tagged petrale sole in the Esteban Deep – a submarine canyon – in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. That spring, working in conjunction with chartered halibut schooners, she began the first survey of salmon populations in the eastern North Pacific Ocean, and by the time she wrapped up this work in 1961, the general distribution of salmon in the North Pacific and Bering Sea was understood. Meanwhile, the Fish and Wildlife Service was renamed the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and reorganized in 1956, creating a new Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (BCF), and John N. Cobb became a part of the BCF fleet.
In 1959, John N. Cobb was supporting the USFWS's Exploratory Fishing and Gear Research (EF&GR) element in 1959 when it fielded its first scuba diving team, which operated from her. In August 1959, she took part in the Chariot Project with the United States Atomic Energy Commission to assess the feasibility of using nuclear explosives to excavate harbors or canals off the northwest coast of Alaska, but the project never came to fruition. Of her first 41 cruises in the 1950s, she focused on experimental fishing methods and equipment in 11, engaged in midwater trawling in seven, conducted bottom and shrimp trawling in two, and tested a fish pump device in two. In 1960, John N. Cobb experimented with the use of a high-resolution echo sounder to locate dragging areas off Washington that contained commercial quantities of fish. In 1961, she worked with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to study deep-water marine resources off Washington and Oregon. In 1963, she joined the BCF ship George B. Kelez in experimental trawling for salmon off Alaska.
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