On May 7, 2011, Joseph Smith interviewed Eldon Levi for the NOAA Beaufort Lab Oral Histories project in Pensacola, Florida. Eldon was born and raised in California. He served in the U.S. Army overseas. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Management from San Jose State University in the mid-1960s. Eldon was initially employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries at field stations in Alaska and Michigan. In 1967, he accepted employment with the Menhaden Program at the Beaufort Lab.  He served as field supervisor for tagging and juvenile abundance surveys on the Atlantic coast. In the early 1970s, he was assigned to work as a field supervisor and port agent to the Menhaden factories at Fernandina Beach, Florida. In the late 1970s, he was transferred to Pensacola Beach, Florida, where he supervised fishery-dependent data collection for the gulf menhaden fishery. He retired from the NMFS in 1994.

The interview covers Levi’s  career, beginning with his recruitment to the Beaufort Lab in 1967. He recounts his early work tagging fish on the Neuse River and his experiences in Alaska, where he initially worked with king salmon and king crab. Levi describes his move to Beaufort, North Carolina. His work expanded to Fernandina Beach, Florida, where he developed a small purse seine for tagging fish and managed sampling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. He provides insight into the evolution of the Gulf fishery during the 1970s and 1980s, discussing the transition from wooden to more modern vessels, the increase in fish tagging operations, and the boom in the oil industry that impacted the local economy. Throughout the interview, Levi shares anecdotes about the camaraderie among the fishery crews and the practical challenges of fieldwork. He reflects on his role in supervising sampling and data collection operations along the Gulf Coast, including his efforts to maintain the program amid logistical and financial constraints.