The death of John N. Cobb, coupled with changes in the administration of the University, did not bode well for the College of Fisheries or any other applied programs in the University. A new governor, Roland Hill Hartley (1864–1952), dismissed Henry Suzzalo (1875–1933) as President of the University. The new President of the University, Dr. Matthew Lyle Spencer (1881–1969), wanted scholarship and high academic standards. Courses in cannery and fishing methods may not have met the new president’s ideas of scholarship.

President Spencer notified the College of Fisheries faculty in April 1930 that the College would be discontinued in the following June. All faculty members were dismissed except for Leonard Peter Schultz (1901–1986), the ichthyologist, who was then assigned to the College of Science.

This action by President Spencer triggered protests from the students enrolled in Fisheries and then an inquiry of the situation by Governor Hartley. The conclusion to this affair was that the UW created a Department of Fisheries in the College of Science. This action allowed the fisheries students to complete their degrees in Fisheries.

The creation of this new Department also signaled large changes in the direction of Fisheries at the UW.

Located in the College of Fisheries complex was the headquarters of the International Fisheries Commission (now International Pacific Halibut Commission). Its director was William Francis Thompson (1888–1965), who had just received his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University. He had studied there under two of the leading fisheries experts of the era, David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) and Charles Henry Gilbert.

Thompson had earned a reputation as an outstanding scientist, one of the first of the new breed of fisheries biologists. He had conducted pioneering research on the Pacific halibut in British Columbia waters as a graduate student at Stanford University. He became the first director of the California State Fisheries Laboratory, and he was named the initial director of the International Fisheries Commission in 1924.

Thompson (Fig. 3) was appointed Research Professor and head of the newly minted Department of Fisheries in May 1930. The appointment was a part-time position, and Thompson remained Director of the Commission. His salary was $2,000 per year.

William Thompson was a very focused man, concerned with fine detail. By August of 1931, he had collected his thoughts and wrote to President Spencer with recommendations to revise the curriculum of the Department. Thompson proposed to emphasize basic science and fishery biology (Table 2) in place of the previous stress on industrial fishery technology. Thompson’s desire was to graduate students who were well grounded in the basic sciences and capable of teaching in them or continuing advanced work. He did not wish to graduate technicians although he wrote Spencer that the Department had an obligation to teach specialized knowledge to technicians.

Thompson began to develop a faculty for the new Department. However, the nation was in the throes of the Great Depression and severe money problems plagued the University. Faculty salaries in 1932 were cut 10%. The financial crunch essentially continued for the remainder of the decade.

Dr. James Eric Lynch (1892–1975), a specialist in invertebrates, was one of the first new hires. Later in the decade, Lauren Russell Donaldson (1903–1998), a graduate student, joined the faculty. Donaldson was later to attain great fame for his genetic studies of salmonid fishes and for developing a strain of "super trout." When Leonard Schultz left the Department in 1936 for a position at the US National Museum in Washington, DC, Arthur Donovan Welander (1908–1982) became the ichthyologist. Because of the financial problems that beset the University, Thompson used guest lecturers recruited from the International Fisheries Commission and from the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, which in 1931 opened the Montlake Laboratory adjacent to the University Campus. Over the decade, the number of courses offered grew but the faculty did not (Table 3).

In 1935, the University was reorganized again and the Department of Fisheries became the School of Fisheries under an umbrella organization called University College. Somewhat later (in 1937), Thompson was appointed Director of the newly formed International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission. This appointment also was a part-time position, so that Thompson was then director of three organizations! He resigned his directorship of the halibut commission in 1939 but retained his leadership of the "salmon commission" and the School of Fisheries. In the late 1930s, Thompson began to lobby the University administration for a new building to replace the "temporary" buildings that Fisheries had been housed in since 1919. The new building did not arrive until 1950.

As World War II became a reality in the late 1930s, the effect upon student enrollment was precipitous. According to Stickney (1989), the enrollment in Fisheries reached 169 students in 1939, but declined to 100 in 1940, and to 67 in 1941. Only six students were enrolled in 1943. After the conclusion of the war, enrollment increased markedly, reaching over 180 students in 1949.

Dr. Thompson resigned as Director of the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission in 1943. He then became the full-time Director of the School of Fisheries.

The Applied Fisheries Laboratory

During World War II, the development of the atomic bomb brought Fisheries into the war effort. In 1943, Professor Lauren Donaldson was ordered by the Manhattan Engineering District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop a laboratory to measure the effects of radiation on aquatic organisms.

The Applied Fisheries Laboratory was established with Dr. Donaldson as the Director. The laboratory was "Top Secret," and Donaldson was forbidden to tell even Dr. Thompson what the laboratory was doing. Donaldson’s group investigated the effects of radiation on fishes and other organisms, initially on the Columbia River at Hanford, Washington. After the end of the War, Donaldson’s laboratory monitored the effects of nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific Ocean. The name of the laboratory was changed in 1958 to the Laboratory of Radiation Biology. Studies of the effects of radiation by the laboratory continued through the 1970s, funded mainly by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

In 1958, the Fern Lake studies, funded by AEC, began as part of the Laboratory program. These investigations were designed to study mineral cycling throughout an entire watershed. The research at Fern Lake involved foresters, limnologists, fishery scientists, and others. The laboratory was renamed the Laboratory of Radiation Ecology (LRE) in 1966, and was directed by Dr. Allyn Henry Seymour (1913–) from 1968 until his retirement in 1978. By the 1970s, the range of studies by the LRE had expanded to include the effects of heavy metals in Puget Sound and the effects of nuclear power plants on the aquatic environment. The laboratory became more involved in water chemistry, and the Water Quality Laboratory was developed to provide chemical analyses to researchers in the College.

The Fisheries Research Institute

After World War II, the Alaska salmon industry was concerned about the need for establishing a scientific basis for regulating the Alaska salmon resource. The federal government was not conducting such studies at that time. The prevalent fear by the industry was that overfishing could decimate the salmon runs.

In 1945, the Bristol Bay canners asked Dr. Thompson to outline a research program for the Alaska red salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). Thompson agreed, and submitted his report in the fall to Aubin R. Barthold (1905–1991), Chairman of the Bristol Bay Packers. In his report, Thompson outlined his approach to study the size of the salmon escapement required to maintain the optimum population of returning salmon.

The Alaska packers accepted Dr. Thompson’s ideas and contracted with him to begin research. The canners of Southeastern Alaska also joined in to support research in their territory. In 1947, the Fisheries Research Institute (FRI) was established (a more detailed history of FRI is available at Alaska Salmon Program).

The FRI was placed in the Graduate School of the University, administratively separate from the School of Fisheries. Dr. Thompson resigned his directorship of the School and was appointed Director of FRI and Research Professor. Initial studies by the Institute were on the biology of red salmon, mainly concentrated in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Research was directed toward assessing age and size composition, determining sex ratios of spawning fish, collecting statistics on commercial catches, and estimating escapement of salmon in various watersheds to establish a better scientific basis for managing the salmon fisheries.

The salmon industry was the major financial supporter of the Institute for nearly 10 years. Contracts from the federal government for research were obtained beginning in 1955.

Beginning in the late 1940s, field camps were built at six locations in Alaska (Fig. 4). In time, research efforts expanded to include high-seas tagging, limnology, and studies of the freshwater life history of salmon. In addition to salmon research in Bristol Bay, high-seas salmon tagging began in 1955 to define the oceanic distribution and migration routes of Asian and North American stocks of salmon. This project developed in the 1960s into a forecast of the return of red salmon to Bristol Bay the following year. During this period significant increases occurred in the number of fishery biologists and graduate students needed to undertake this work. Numerous advanced degrees were based on research conducted by FRI. Dr. Thompson was the major professor for many of these students.

Upon Dr. Thompson’s retirement in 1958, William Francis Royce (1916–) was appointed Director of FRI. At this time, FRI was moved from the Graduate School to the newly established College of Fisheries. Dr. Royce served as Director until his appointment as Associate Dean of the College in 1967. Dr. Robert Louis (Bud) Burgner (1919–) succeeded Dr. Royce as FRI Director in 1967 and served until 1984. Under these two scientists, FRI continued to expand. By the mid-1960s, the scope of investigations by FRI was not restricted to Alaska. Studies expanded geographically and included research on many species other than salmon. The Institute later became the "umbrella organization" under which all contractual research in the School was conducted. A new building to house FRI was constructed in 1968 adjacent to the Fisheries Center.

Dr. Thompson retired in 1958 at age 70. He brought fame and respect to the University for the quality of its fisheries research. For many, the School of Fisheries was the "house that Thompson built." From the 1940s through the 1980s, the roster of leading fishery scientists of the USA included many who were students of Thompson. Scientists trained in the School were in leading positions in many foreign countries and in international fisheries organizations. For decades he was the voice of fisheries in the Northwest. In time, three of his former students would become directors of the School of Fisheries. Dr. Thompson died in 1965.