The idea to create a Pacific version of ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea)[3] was first discussed by scientists from Canada, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States who were attending a conference, sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in February 1973.
[7] The primary mandate of the organization is to promote and to coordinate marine scientific research in the North Pacific Ocean and to provide a mechanism for information and data exchange among scientists in its member country.
The alignment of PICES with a global research program (GLOBEC) in the mid 1990s was fundamental to building the reputation of the organization in the international scientific community.
International borders are much farther apart in the North Pacific compared to the northeastern Atlantic, so coastal fisheries that might compete are separated by large distances involving fewer countries.
To facilitate cooperative research on important topics by marine scientists in member countries, PICES established two major integrative scientific programs during its first two decades.
[15] This version placed greater emphasis on basin-scale comparisons, the primary scale of interest of the organization, but the cost and effort that was required to create such a document led to simplifications.
During its first decade, PICES became a major international forum for exchanging results and discussing climatic-oceanic-biotic research in the North Pacific.
Awareness of the benefits of working cooperatively on scientific problems led to increasing collaboration with like-minded organizations in the North Pacific.
The results of the conference appeared in the largest special issue of Progress in Oceanography ever published [16] In the years that followed, PICES partnered with ICES, IOC, SCOR, and others to build its scientific and organizational reputations.