Marie Poland Fish

Marie "Bobbie" Dennis Poland Fish (1900 - February 2, 1989) was an American oceanographer and marine biologist known for her bioacoustics research and the finding of eel eggs in the Sargasso Sea. Her research on underwater sound detection allowed the United States Navy to distinguish enemy submarines from wildlife. The United States Navy awarded her its highest civilian award, the Distinguished Service Medal, in 1966 to recognize her contributions during her twenty-two years (1948-1970) leading the "Underwater Sound of Biological Origin" project for the Office of Naval Research. She also founded the Narragansett Marine Laboratory with her husband Charles. It is now the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography. Early life and education Marie Poland was born in 1900 in Paterson, New Jersey. Her nickname "Bobbie" derived from her bobbed flapper haircut. She graduated from Smith College before earning a PhD from the University of Rhode Island. She graduated in 1921, and married Charles Fish in 1923. Career Before working for the Office of Naval Research, she worked for the United States Bureau of Fisheries, Buffalo Museum of Science, New York State Conservation Department, University of Rhode Island, United States National Museum (now the Smithsonian Institution), Pacific Oceanic Biology Project, and the State of Rhode Island in various roles as scientist, researcher, investigator, instructor, and curator. In 1925, Marie Poland Fish and her husband Charles John Fish, participated in the first oceanographic expedition of the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society), the Arcturus expedition, which was led by William Beebe. The six-month long expedition left New York on February 11, 1925, and sailed through the Sargasso Sea to the Galápagos Islands, returning to New York on July 30, 1925. Marie Poland Fish worked on samples from the expedition at least up to 1932. During this expedition she became the first person to identify the eggs of the elusive American eel. which reached the newspapers given the mystery surrounding the origin of eels. In a 1926 article in Science she first describes the collection of the eggs and their development into what she was able to identify as an American eel. In 1927 she published the full taxonomic description. She concludes her initial description by noting that