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Massachusetts was the first state to establish fishery commissions in 1865.
Fisheries science and the American Fisheries Society had their beginnings in northeastern North America in 1870, when a group of lay professionals from the U.S. and Canada, interested in fish culture and aquatic resources, convened to form the American Fish Culturists Association (later to become the American Fisheries Society).
The first meeting of the American Fisheries Society founders was held at the offices of the New York State Poultry Society in New York City on December 20, 1870.
AFS was originally named the American Fish Culturalists’ Association when it was formed in 1870.
Society activities in 1870 included discussion of the problems with migration barriers in rivers from the building of dams
The U.S. Commission on Fish and Fisheries was authorized by Congress in 1871 after urging from AFS and others. The first director was AFS member Spencer Baird.
AFS members urged the United States Congress to increase the appropriations for the establishment of at least two fish hatcheries in 1871.
The first volume of Transactions was published in 1872.
The Society changed its name to the American Fish Cultural Association in 1878.
In 1882, honorary American Fishery Society members included Thomas H. Huxley of England and His Royal Highness Frederick William, the Crown Prince of Prussia and Germany.
Launched in 1882, the U.S. Fish Commission’s Albatross was the first ship designed expressly for fisheries and oceanography research and was capable of long cruises.
In 1885, the Society’s name was changed a final time to the American Fisheries Society.
In 1898 U.S. Congress passed its first salmon protection law in order to protect the fish from commercial obstruction of Alaska’s Karluk River.
In 1913 AFS members agreed that more formal training in fisheries was needed and recognized that programs within existing colleges and universities were not sufficiently comprehensive.
The American Fisheries Society was an active and effective professional and conservation organization by 1920.
Emmeline Moore was the first woman to lead AFS after being elected president of the Society in 1927.
AFS’s first North American Fish Policy was adopted in June 1938, which defined and intellectual and institutional framework for the value of fish and fisheries.
Specially designed railroad cars were used to transport fish eggs and fry across the continent in stocking programs conducted by the Bureau of Fisheries.
The Western Division of the American Fisheries Society was the first division established in 1948.
A convention in 1948 formed the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF) to govern fishing in international waters of the North Atlantic. The treaty was ratified in 1950 to study fisheries in two million square miles of ocean outside the territorial waters of nations rimming the northwest Atlantic.