Roland Wigley
Voices from the Science Centers
Voices from the Science Centers is an oral history initiative dedicated to documenting the institutional knowledge of fisheries scientists and administrators in the labs of NOAA’s Fisheries Science Centers.
Roland Wigley was born in 1923 in New Jersey. He studied at the University of Maine at Orono, where his college career was interrupted by World War II. He served in the Army Air Corps during the war. He returned to the University of Maine after the war and received his PhD from Cornell University, where he did a dissertation on the life history of the sea lamprey of Cayuga Lake. He began working for the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries as student in 1949 and was hired in a permanent capacity in 1954. His first research project was the haddock food study. He participated in many surveys on the Albatross III and was Head of Benthic Investigation.
Interview contains discussions of: U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, storms, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Rachel Carson, Albatross III, fish tagging, sargassum, pycnogonids, Woods Hole League, relationship between Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, WHOI and MBL, haddock food study, benthic studies, Marine Flora & Fauna of the Northeast United States, the Woods Hole scientific community and the red crab survey.
Roland Wigley discusses the early days of the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in 1949, a voyage with Rachael Carson, work with various professionals at the Bureau in 1954 and the remainder of his career. He shares the details of a near-fatal storm in 1955; WHOI history and connections; innovations in research; includes many names in the field in Canada, U.S., and Aberdeen, Scotland.
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