"The NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette was engaged as support for a Fisheries Monitoring and Research Division (FMRD) Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) fisheries research program. The two primary missions involved the collection of eteline snappers and groupers for age, growth and maturity studies and the collection of billfish eggs and larvae in waters off the coastlines of Hawai'i and Penguin Banks (Fig. 1). Daytime operations included surface net tows using a 1.8-m Isaacs-Kidd (IK) trawl and small boat operations including handline bottomfishing and dip-netting in surface slicks. Night operations consisted of Cobb midwater trawl for epipelagic and pelagic juvenile reef and bottomfish species and conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) casts at predetermined locations"--Type of operation.

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)