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 from the sea bottom to below the sea's surface 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. NOAA On 3 October