1970, a reorganization occurred which created NOAA under the United States Department of Commerce. Under the reorganization, the BCF came under the control of the new National Marine Fisheries Service NMFS, an element of NOAA, and via a phased process during 1972 and 1973 the ships of the NMFS and of another element of NOAA, the National Ocean Survey – successor to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was abolished upon the 1970 creation of NOAA – were brought together to form a consolidated NOAA fleet. John N. Cobb became a part of the new NOAA fleet via this process and was redesignated NOAAS John N. Cobb (R 552). With her home port at NOAA's Marine Operations Center-Pacific (MOC-P) in Seattle and operated by NOAA's Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, John N. Cobb conducted research off southeastern Alaska and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. She supported research of the NMFS Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau, Alaska, collecting fish and crustacean specimens using trawls and benthic longlines; and fish larvae, fish eggs, and plankton using plankton nets and surface and mid-water larval nets. Scientists from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle also conducted surveys of whales and porpoises – including cetacean ecology and humpback whale prey investigations – and of seals, and studied harbor seal ecology near tidewater glaciers while aboard John N. Cobb. She also took part in coral and sponge benthic habitat studies, the mapping of near-shore estuary habitats, sablefish tagging and telemetry studies, assessments of juvenile rockfish habitats, and oceanographic sampling and long-term coastal monitoring, and she provided support to remote field camps and the Little Port Walter Marine Station in Port Walter, Alaska. In the early 1980s John N. Cobb collaborated with other research vessels in a research project using small mesh purse seines to sample juvenile salmon off the coasts of Alaska, British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington. In the immediate aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound on 29 March 1989, John N. Cobb, which was in an inactive status at the time, quickly returned to active duty and played an important role in post-spill research on the effects of the spill on the environment. In subsequent years, she supported numerous studies of the lasting ecological effects of the spill on Prince William Sound. In the mid-1990s, John N. Cobb came to