Photo: Unattributed / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
One of the NOAA research ships that calls Newport home carries the name of Bell M. Shimada, a fisheries scientist whose career was cut short in the 1950s.
A Pacific career
Shimada, a Japanese American born in Seattle, studied fisheries at the University of Washington. He was held in an internment camp during World War II, then served in the Army. After the war he became a leading researcher on Pacific tuna.
Tuna science
His work helped lay the groundwork for how scientists study and manage tropical tuna in the eastern Pacific. He worked with the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission and later the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries.
His ship
Shimada died in a plane crash in 1958. NOAA named a fisheries survey ship for him, and it operates from the agency’s Marine Operations Center-Pacific in Newport, studying fish stocks along the West Coast.
Rosalind Teague covers ocean science, coastal hazards and the people who shaped the central coast.
