US FWS John R. Manning (FWS 1002) was an American fisheries research vessel in commission in the fleet of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service from 1950 to 1969. She explored the Pacific Ocean in search of commercially valuable populations of fish and shellfish. After the end of her Fish and Wildlife Service career, she operated as the commercial fishing vessel MV R. B. Hendrickson until she sank in 1979.
Origin 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 office, Pacific Ocean Fishery Investigations (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, 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.
Construction and commissioning Unlike Henry O’Malley and Hugh M. Smith, which were converted patrol boats the FWS acquired from the United States Navy, John R. Manning was purpose-built for the FWS as a fisheries research vessel. The firm of Pillsbury & Martignoni designed her as a purse-seiner capable of long-distance deployments to remote areas with limited refueling options. The FWS awarded a contract for her construction to the Pacific Boatbuilding Company in Tacoma, Washington, on 27 June 1949. Launched in early 1950, she was delivered to the FWS shortly thereafter. She was commissioned early in 1950 as US FWS John R. Manning (FWS 1002), named for John Ruel Manning (1897–1939), a United States Bureau of Fisheries chemist and technologist who pioneered the concept of fishery products utilization research.
Technical characteristics John R. Manning was specially designed for exploratory and experimental fishing. She was constructed along the lines of a typical United States West Coast commercial purse-seiner, but with a number of significant differences, including a longer range and the inclusion of live bait tanks — installed to allow her to experiment with new ways of purse-seining — and a large number of gurdies (mechanical cranks used to haul fishing lines) to facilitate her experimentation with new purse-seining techniques. In addition to commercial-scale purse-seining, she was outfitted for longline fishing and deep-water trolling. An 86-foot-6-inch (26.37 m) long motor vessel, John R. Manning had a wooden hull, a 320-horsepower (240 kW) Washington Iron Works diesel engine, and two diesel generators for auxiliary power. She had a cruising speed of 7.75 knots (14.4 km/h; 8.9 mph) or 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph) (sources disagree), and her large fuel capacity gave her a cruising range of 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km), a longer range than commercial fishing boats of her size made necessary by the vast size — 13,000,000 square miles (34,000,000 km2) — of the ocean area in which she was to operate and the limited refueling options in the area. She had a brine refrigeration system capable of preserving 30 short tons (27 t) of tuna for later laboratory analysis ashore, and during construction her brine wells were increased to four from the originally planned two. She also was equipped to take surface and subsurface water temperature readings. Her navigational aids were modern by the standards of 1950 and included LORAN, a radio direction finder, a 250-watt radio telephone and radio telegraph transmitter, and an automatic steering pilot.
Service history
Fish and Wildlife Service
After her commissioning, John R. Manning departed Seattle, Washington, on 21 February 1950, called at San Pedro, California, then proceeded to her home port, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from which she operated in support of the FWS's Pacific Oceanic Fishery Investigations (POFI). She began her FWS career with a shakedown and training period off Hawaii before departing for a cruise to the Line Islands. POFI tasked her to search for commercially viable populations of fish around the Hawaiian Islands and in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the Philippine Sea between Hawaii and Palau in cooperation with the United States West Coast fishing industry, as well as to test alternative capture methods because of the lack of live bait in the open ocean. Accordingly, she conducted exploratory tuna fishing operations around the Hawaiian Islands and experimented with the use of purse-seining for skipjack tuna around Hawaii and of gillnetting around the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands. Her crew reported disappointing results with purse-seining and gillnetting, but also that the use of modified longline gear yielded a 40 percent increase in the take of yellowfin tuna. Fisheries scientists aboard John R. Manning studied the diets of albacore, yellowfin tuna, and big-eyed tuna by examining the contents of their stomachs. During her early years in the tropical Pacific, John R. Manning captured a number of rare or unusual fishes. These included:
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