Swimming With Fishes

By Bob Iversen

At age 27, with a degree in Liberal Arts from Georgetown University, and without any scientific background, Bob Iversen decided to become a marine biologist by studying fisheries at the University of Hawaii. The U.S Navy had positioned him to do this by sending him to Hawaii after recalling him to active duty as a Petty Officer Third Class when the Korean War started in 1950.

While at the University of Hawaii he was a good student but when offered a job as a biological technician with the U. S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries he said yes and started going to sea on the Bureau's small oceanographic research vessels. He studied the tuna species the laboratory was studying, especially the hearing ability of Yellowfin Tuna. He trained one to swim through a maze to get a reward after hearing sounds. After several decades as a marine biologist, Bob was seconded to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo as Fisheries Attache for three years. Bob's various jobs, at sea and on shore introduced him to many unusual events that have become the 28 episodes in this book, including several shark stories.

He hopes that his career will be a spur to young men and women not to wait if they wish to become a marine biologist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228818205

Book preview

About the Author

Bob Iversen was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. He attended high school in Pennsylvania (USA), and while at high school, he became an expert touch typist at a professional level. This skill played a major role during his enlisted service in the U.S. Navy that started at age 17 from 1945 to 1946 and 1950 to 1952 both as a Petty Officer Third Class. During his 1945 to 1946 Naval service, when post boot-camp assignments were made, his typing ability resulted in him being assigned to an office ashore and not to a ship in the Okinawa area. When released from active duty in 1946, he opted to join the U.S. Naval Reserves as he liked the Navy. This fundamentally changed his life.

From 1946 to 1950 Bob attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and graduated from Georgetown on June 12, 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts. After a few weeks’ search for employment, the Korean War started on June 25, 1950, and a few weeks after that he received a letter from the U.S. Navy telling him to report within 30 days to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for further transfer. This he did. His costs were minimal as his uniforms from his 1945 to 1946 service still fit. Two weeks after reporting to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he was sent to a Naval base outside San Francisco with orders to be transferred to Hawaii where he arrived in September 1950.

In Hawaii he was told he would go to Korea, but this did not eventuate and instead he was assigned shore duty at the office of CinCPacFleet (Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet), which also covered Naval operations in Korea. Bob’s job was to answer the Admiral’s telephone between midnight and 5 a.m. To pass the time, he searched for something interesting to read and found a book in the Admiral’s library titled Kon-Tiki by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl. This book described Heyerdahl’s 105-day drift in a 30-foot long balsa wood raft from Peru to the Polynesian island of Raroria. Heyerdahl’s theory was that Polynesians originally came from South America and not from the Southeast and Western Pacific. Heyerdahl’s drift turned Pacific anthropology upside down, although some think Heyerdahl was partially correct.

Bob said he read the entire book Kon-Tiki in one night’s watch, and when he finished reading about what Heyerdahl and his four fellow explorers did in discovering the many facets of the marine environment and the multitude of marine animals, he had decided that being a marine biologist would be a fascinating occupation. Later, he was told that instead of answering the Admiral’s telephone during mid-watch, he would be transferred to the Pearl Harbor Receiving Station, an organization with about 50 officers and men. Its commanding officer was a ‘mustang’ lieutenant commander, an officer who was commissioned from enlisted ranks. When Bob’s commanding officer was confronted by a petty officer third class with a fresh bachelor’s degree under his arm from Georgetown University, he did not know what to do with him. When Bob told his skipper that his rate (job specialty) had been changed from Specialist X (a miscellaneous category) to Journalist (without any training in this rate), the commanding officer decided to make him the editor of a Navy newspaper that did not exist, but would cover the Fourteenth Naval District headquarters and related units inside Pearl Harbor (but not Submarine Headquarters and related units). Bob produced a four-page newspaper until he was released from active duty in November 1952. What happened next in Bob’s fisheries career and why it happened is described in the preface to this memoir — to which the reader is directed.

Preface

This memoir has been written for two reasons. The first is that by telling how I entered the field of marine biology, young individuals seeking a career in the oceans may be guided into marine biology as a rewarding field of endeavor. The second is that describing my modest progression as a Fishery Biologist at the Biological Laboratory of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service in Hawaii may be of interest to young people contemplating a career in fisheries where unusual things might happen to them as they did to me over a 40-year Pacific fisheries career. I have enjoyed writing a book that is a little out of the ordinary and that I hope may be of interest to the public at large. I would not recommend that a young person follow my example and wait until they were 25, or in my case 27, to embark on a career in marine biology. Instead, the sooner the better, and if these short descriptions of some aspects of marine biology attract a young person, they will have served their purpose. All of the odd or unusual things described in the episodes of this memoir are true.

After the Navy released me from active duty in 1952, I got a job as a news writer from 1952 to 1954 at the Hawaii Visitors Bureau. I spent as much time as possible at the Waikiki Aquarium watching fish and learning about them. I also spent as much time as I could skin diving and scuba diving. I visited the office of Vernon Brock, Director of the Hawaii Division of Fish and Game, and sought his advice on becoming a marine biologist at age 27 with no scientific background whatsoever. Vernon Brock told me I could if I worked hard. He suggested I visit the Chairman of the Department of Zoology at the University of Hawaii, Dr. Robert Hiatt, who told me that if I doubled up on some courses — such as taking General Zoology and Embryology at the same time — perhaps I could get a Master’s degree in several years. I then enrolled in 1954 as a special category graduate student and took courses for about 18 months until I got a job as a laboratory technician at the Biological Laboratory of the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (now National Marine Fisheries Service). Two of the episodes described in this memoir, with fellow graduate students Shirley Trefz (1954) and Dr. Don Strasberg (1955), occurred in those years. I was taken under the wing of Philip Helfrich, a doctoral candidate who taught me almost everything I learned at the University of Hawaii about marine biology. We remain close friends in 2019.

My courses at the university ended in 1956 when I started to go to sea on the Bureau’s Research Vessel Hugh M. Smith, a wooden 120-foot long general-purpose biological and oceanographic research vessel. I must admit I was not the best graduate student as I did not follow through enough to get a master’s degree. Overall, however, I think I was a B+ student, but in ichthyology I got an A in each semester. My career time at sea was on three U.S. Government research vessels. Besides the R/V Hugh M. Smith, the other two were on the Research Vessels Charles H. Gilbert and Townsend Cromwell. Cruises on these three vessels provided the basis for many of the episodes of this memoir. A high point was being appointed Regional Fisheries Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo in 1980. One of the episodes is about my job at the Embassy and how I got the best of two Japanese diplomats.

By the time I retired I had a modest publication record. Two reports that I believe are best are on Hearing Thresholds of Yellowfin Tuna and Little Tuna and Native Hawaiian Fishing Rights. I wrote another report in 2010 titled How do Sperm Whales Locate Giant Squid? But it was rejected by two scholarly journals. The basis for the whale vs. giant squid paper was another paper titled An Indication of Underwater Sounds by Squid which was published in the journal Nature. My theory is that sperm whales listen for sounds made by giant squid. A version of this paper is one of the episodes in this memoir. Events described in this memoir’s episodes fall into two categories: one broad and the other very narrow. Ten episodes take place on board the three fishery research vessels, or other ships or U.S. Coast Guard fisheries flights (broad). Two episodes involve nudity of persons involved (narrow). One is about a man I interviewed about a stranded porpoise at Haleiwa Beach Park, Oahu, Hawaii, and the other involves two young ladies in Kodiak, Alaska in 1979 who interrupted my business day when I was between appointments (see the episode on Plump Alaskan Ladies). I have decided to give the technical citations to these three papers in one listing in an Appendix at the end of this memoir.

Note to readers: Because my post-retirement activities involving research and writing on the mental health of seafarers resulted in two technical papers that were very well received, I have also listed their citations in Appendix 6.

Introduction

Readers may find this hard to believe, but my selection as the U.S. Fishery Attaché in Tokyo in 1979 commenced with two lovely young Alaskan women dancing in front of me naked to their waists. This occurred in 1979 in Kodiak, Alaska, a huge U.S. fishing port, and resulted in my writing this memoir about odd and unusual fisheries events that happened to me in Pacific fisheries from 1954 to 2010. This memoir contains 28 episodes providing details of these odd and unusual events (to me) that occurred while I was at sea; assisting in preparation for three nuclear explosions at Eniwetok Atoll; watching an actual nuclear explosion at Christmas Island (the one south of Hawaii) and longline fishing under the bomb blast 24 hours later; participating in the seizure of an illegal Japanese fishing trawler near Midway Islands; disposing of a dead sperm whale and a stranded porpoise (dolphin) in Hawaii; being thrown overboard in 1957 from the Hawaii Department of Fish and Game’s Research Vessel Makua (No. 23) in the middle of the Kauai channel; and being present when Captain Walter Paulo of the Research Vessel Townsend Cromwell had to make a life-or-death decision about a sick boy at Kapingamarangi Atoll. Ten of the episodes occurred when I was on the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Research Vessels Hugh M. Smith and Charles H. Gilbert when these two ships were dispatched to undertake marine biological and oceanographic investigations in waters around Hawaii; at Eniwetok Atoll; from Hawaii south to the Equator; thence to the Marquesas Islands; and south to French Polynesia and Tahiti; and on other ships or on U.S. Coast Guard flights. Three of the episodes are not odd or unusual. One is entitled How do Sperm Whales Locate Giant Squid? and is based on a formal scientific paper I could not get published. I think the sperm whales listen for giant squid. Episode 13 is about the United Fishing Agency and is based on my many visits to the Agency’s fresh fish auction at Pier 38 in Honolulu, which I consider to be like going to a fisheries graduate school. The third episode is entitled "Asherah, a Phoenician Goddess for Fisheries Research" and is about 50 dives to 600 feet by a two-man submarine in 1965 just outside of Honolulu to study tuna and other marine animals.

Ship names: ‘Research Vessel’ or ‘R/V’ are used to describe the ships on which I served. These terms are used interchangeably. Ship names in every case are given in italics, a practice which I have always followed.

Names of fish: In many cases when the common names of fish are given, their Hawaiian names are shown in parentheses after their common names. Examples are ‘yellowfin tuna (ahi),’ ‘skipjack tuna (aku),’ and ‘little tuna (kawakawa).’ This is not followed in every case because this memoir is not a taxonomic list. The meanings of ahi and aku are discussed in footnotes. In some cases, the scientific names of fish are shown in italics.

Acronyms

Table of Contents

About the Author

Preface

Introduction

Acronyms

Episode 1Life or Death on Leaving Kapingamarangi Atoll

Episode 2United States of America - 1, Japan - 0

Episode 3KOSHIN MARU No. 21

Episode 4Go for Broke

Episode 5How I Once Owned a Dead Sperm Whale

Episode 6Plump Alaskan Ladies

Episode 7Two Sharks: One Real, One Fake

Episode 8The White Dot (Another Shark Story)

Episode 9Asherah, a Phoenician Sea Goddess for Fisheries Research

Episode 10The Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament

Episode 11Gastric Ulcers in Marlin

Episode 12How do Sperm Whales Locate Giant Squid?

Episode 13The United Fishing Agency

Episode 14Atomic Bomb Tests at Christmas Island

Episode 15Jockey Shorts

Episode 16On Trying to Kiss a Live Octopus Underwater

Episode 17Captain Hook and Four Dangerous Sharks

Episode 18Akule à la Fishery Attaché

Episode 19Exploding 346,000 Tons of Dynamite

in Enewetak Atoll’s Lagoon

Episode 20A Stranded Porpoise and a Nude Interview

Episode 21One and One-Half Tsunamis — In Nine Days

Episode 22What is Your Status?

Episode 23On Being Thrown Overboard

Episode 24Losing an Expensive Rolex Watch in 35 Feet of Water

Episode 25Hundreds, Maybe Thousands, of Big Jellyfish

Episode 26Tuna Offal: Black, Slimy, and Putrid

Episode 27On Getting a Toothache in Your Arm

Episode 28How Shirley Trefz saved me from a dead porpcupine fish

Acknowledgements

Episode 1

Life or Death on Leaving Kapingamarangi Atoll

This is the story of a great fisherman and great seafarer, a Hawaiian kupuna or elder, who in 1971 demonstrated remarkable seamanship and the ability to make a very difficult decision about a sick boy when leaving the Polynesian atoll of Kapingamarangi. His name is Walter Paulo and he was blind in one eye. In June 1971, he was Master of the United States

Figure 1. The R/V Townsend Cromwell. She took us to Kapingamarangi Atoll in 1971 and to other Pacific islands in this story.

fishery Research Vessel Townsend Cromwell during a three-day visit to Kapingamarangi Atoll, a beautiful island in the tropical Western Pacific near the equator north of Papua New Guinea.

What follows took place during Townsend Cromwell Cruise 53, a cross Pacific expedition from Honolulu to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The ship returned to Honolulu by threading its way through many of the islands of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. It was a lengthy voyage. I estimated the Townsend Cromwell covered about 11,000 nautical miles during the 13 weeks it was away from Honolulu. For details on the history of both Captain Paulo and of the ship, see three appendices at the end of this episode.

I was the field party chief on the leg from Chuuk Island (aka Truk) to Honolulu. Besides Chuuk, we visited the islands of Nama, Piis, Nukuoro, Kapingamarangi, Pohnpei (aka