[2] When not engaged in political activities or in government office, Bell pursued a career as an owner and operator of hotels and restaurants.
[1] He was a member of the Methodist Church, held memberships in the Rotary Club, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and the Odd Fellows,[1] and was an avid hunter and fisherman.
[3] The representatives of each state in a given zone and the chairman of that zone were to meet at least once every three months, and the five zone chairmen were to meet with the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries twice a year, all with a goal of ensuring that fishery resources were managed in a coordinated manner among the states and in harmony with efforts of the U.S., Bureau of Fisheries, including the regulation of commercial fishing, the stocking of fish to avoid overstocking in some areas and a lack of stocking in others, and addressing pollution problems and other conservation issues in rivers from the standpoint of each river system as whole, without limiting the scope of policies to state boundaries.
[8] The American Fisheries Society elected Bell as its president for a one-year term in the final session of its annual convention on September 11, 1935.
[9] A conference in Washington, D.C. in 1927 to address issues related to the American shad fishery had resulted in little more than indifference and inaction, so Bell called the first Atlantic States shad conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on February 6, 1937, to revitalize the effort by considering ways of restoring and developing the fishery.
[10] Attended by the chairman of the United States House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Congressman S. Otis Bland of Virginia, and representatives of the Bureau of Fisheries and of representatives of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia, including the commissioners of the National Planning Council of Commercial and Game Fish Commissioners from those states, the conference discussed the biology and propagation of the American shad, regulation of the American shad harvest, and obstructions and pollution affecting the American shad population, and recommended the establishment of a permanent Atlantic Coast Shad Conservation Council as well as increased Bureau of Fisheries scientific investigation of the fishery.
[11] During the meeting, the Bureau of Fisheries impressed upon TVA officials that their plans to convert free-flowing streams with clear water into artificial lakes characterized by still water probably would destroy the freshwater mussel population, greatly reduce populations of buffalo fish, carp, catfish, paddlefish, freshwater drum (also known as sheepshead), sturgeon, suckers, and other bottom-feeders, and at least make survival more difficult for species better adapted to still water, such as bass, crappie, pike-perch, and sunfish, all with a potential impact on the local economy, which relied in part on fishing.
[12] The Fisheries Service Bulletin listed the following as the Bureau's achievements under Bell's leadership:[13] Bell's travels on inspection tours of Bureau of Fisheries facilities took him throughout the continental United States and to the Territory of Alaska, and included visits to the Pribilof Islands[15] and the Territory of Hawaii.
[16] Bell's last official action as commissioner was the creation of a hatchery school to instruct Bureau of Fisheries superintendents and employees in the latest fish-culture techniques.