page_title: Oscar Elton Sette
section_title: North Atlantic Fishery Investigation, 1928-1937
hierarchical_section_title: Oscar Elton Sette / Biography / North Atlantic Fishery Investigation, 1928-1937
caption_attribution_description: English: The United States Bureau of Fisheries research ship Albatross II
context_page_description: Oscar Elton Sette, who preferred to be called Elton Sette, was an influential 20th-century American fisheries scientist. During a five-decade career with the United States Bureau of Fisheries, United States Fish and Wildlife Service and its Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, Sette pioneered the integration of fisheries science with the sciences of oceanography and meteorology to develop a complete understanding of the physical and biological characteristics of the ocean environment and the effects of those characteristics on fisheries and fluctuations in the abundance of fish. He is recognized both in the United States and internationally for many significant contributions he made to marine fisheries research and for his leadership in the maturation of fisheries science to encompass fisheries oceanography, defined as the "appraisal or exploitation of any kind of [marine] organism useful to Man" and "the study of oceanic processes affecting the abundance and availability of commercial fishes." Many fisheries scientists consider him to be the "father of modern fisheries science."
context_section_description: At the same time that Sette took up his new duties in Higgins′ division, the Bureau of Fisheries was establishing regional research teams, or "investigations," to investigate fisheries around the United States, and Sette became the chief of one of them, the North Atlantic Fishery Investigations. Sette set up the headquarters of the new investigations office at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under his guidance, the Bureau of Fisheries′ understanding of Atlantic Ocean fisheries off the United States East Coast increased substantially. Each summer, Sette also served as director of the Bureau's Fisheries Station at Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
  Sette himself conducted research of the Atlantic mackerel fishery aboard the Bureau of Fisheries research ship Albatross II from 1926 until 1932. After a preliminary cruise in 1926, his research aboard Abatross II began in earnest in 1927, focusing on the effects of changes in ecological conditions on Atlantic mackerel eggs and larvae. Before his research ended abruptly in June 1932, when the aging ship became uneconomical to operate and was decommissioned, he concluded that mortality rates among Atlantic mackerel larvae changed from year to year according to variations in drift based on winds and not, as had earlier been proposed, based on changes in mortality at the critical period when larvae switched over from their yolks to exogenous food sources. Sette's study pioneered the computation of population estimates of larval fish growth and mortality rates.
  In addition to his official duties, Sette pursued postgraduate studies and received a Master of Arts in Biology from Harvard University in 1930.
caption: The United States Bureau of Fisheries research ship Albatross II. Sette investigated the Atlantic mackerel fishery aboard her from 1926 to 1932.
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