Becoming a marine scientist: helped by a daily quota of three lumps of coal

Growing up in the 1930s and being educated in England was much easier than it is now. The high school curriculum was necessarily pretty limited, and my energy went into physics, biology, and chemistry. At the University of Reading, I was pointed towards fisheries research. My first job interview resulted in me being hired as a “naturalist” at the Lowestoft Laboratory. My first trip on the North Sea, in winter, went well, and my boss Michael Graham showed me how to handle live fish gently. Back from that first voyage in spring 1946, I was introduced to my new colleague and close collaborator, Ray Beverton. Three lumps of coal is what Ray and I were allowed per day to keep us warm in the little annex of a terrace house on Lowestoft’s seafront. Much of the technical work on our 1957 book was completed by about 1950 when I left to take a job with the Nature Conservancy. In December 1953, I began a 25-year career with Food and Agriculture Organization’s Fisheries Division, which eventually led to my involvement with whales and the International Whaling Commission’s Committee of Three. My final years returned me to management issues regarding fisheries, especially demersal fishing in European Union waters, focusing on the matter of choosing target fishing mortality for sustainable fishing.