Corporate Body

CSIR/O Division of Fisheries (1940 - 1956)

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

From
May 1940
Cronulla, New South Wales, Australia
To
1 January 1956
Functions
Fisheries Research or Regulation, Marine Science and Industrial or scientific research
Reference No
CA 7836
Legal Status
Agency of the Commonwealth of Australia
Location
Cronulla, New South Wales

Summary

The CSIR Fisheries Investigation Section gained Divisional status in 1940, its name changing to the Division of Fisheries. In early 1956, the Division became the Division of Fisheries and Oceanography, acknowledging its research in both areas.

Skip to

Details

From "CSIRO research fro Australia" (1962) pdf page 16:
"One group in the Division, using the "Warreen", concentrated on open sea fisheries, while a second group began a study of the coastal and estuarine waters which are, in Australia, the main fishing grounds.

The open sea programme was shortlived, as the "Warreen" was taken off the job in the early days of the war. There was a consequent concentration on coastal fish, and valuable studies were made of the mullet and of clupeoids (e.g. the pilchard).

After the war the Division expanded its interests in several directions. The Western Australian crayfish, an important
export commodity, was studied. At Thursday Island, off Cape York, facilities were set up for the study of pearl shell and pearl culture. In Tasmania, an officer undertook a study of the fresh water fish in the island's lakes and rivers.

A number of small research vessels became available and work on the open sea fisheries was resumed. The scope of
the Division's research widened to include some oceanographical topics, and when Dr. G. F. Humphrey succeeded Dr. Thompson in 1956 the Division was renamed "Fisheries and Oceanography".

Chronology events from "CSIRO at sea" (1988) pages 212-213

Chronology

May 1940
Event - CSIR "Fisheries Investigation Section" renamed "Division of Fisheries "ยท Chief Harold Thompson
April 1955
Event - First seatrials of Hamon/Brown CTD on Derwent Hunter
January 1956
Event - Division renamed "Division of Fisheries and Oceanography"; George Frederick Humphrey appointed Chief

Timeline

 1937 - 1940 CSIR Fisheries Investigations Section
       1940 - 1956 CSIR/O Division of Fisheries
             1956 - 1981 CSIRO Division of Fisheries and Oceanography
                   1981 - 1988 CSIRO Division of Fisheries Research
                   1981 - 1997 CSIRO Division of Oceanography
                         1988 - 1997 CSIRO Division of Fisheries
                         1997 - 2005 CSIRO Marine Research
                               1997 - 2005 CSIRO Marine Research
                               2005 - 2014 CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research

Related People

Published resources

Books

Edited Books

  • Mawson, Vivienne, Tranter, David J.; and Pearce, Alan F. eds, CSIRO at Sea: 50 Years of Marine Science (Hobart: CSIRO Marine Laboratories, 1988), 216 pp. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

Ailie Smith

Created: 6 July 2000, Last modified: 28 February 2025

EOAS ID: biogs/A000659b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2025 May (Gwangal moronn - Gariwerd calendar - Autumn: late March to end of May - season of honey bees)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#gwangal-moronn
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/A000659b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260