US FWS Hugh M. Smith was an American fisheries science research vessel in commission from 1949 to 1959 in the fleet of the United States Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service.

After her Fish and Wildlife Service career ended, she was leased to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1959 to 1963, then operated in American Samoa during the mid-1960s, and finally served the Philippine Merchant Marine Academy as the laboratory training ship Habagat from 1965 until she capsized in a storm in the late 1970s.

[8] As converted, Hugh M. Smith was equipped with laboratory facilities, an oceanographic winch for use in studying plankton and water temperature, live bait tanks, refrigerated holds, and an auxiliary propulsion motor that allowed her to operate at the low speeds necessary to carry out many of her scientific activities.

[8] Hugh M. Smith departed Seattle on 15 November 1949 bound for Honolulu,[8] the second of the three fisheries research vessels the FWS assigned to POFI to enter service.

[8] After arriving in Hawaii, she put back to sea on 8 December 1949 for her first FWS cruise, a 16-day shakedown cruise in the waters of the Hawaiian Islands to test her equipment — including special equipment for catching tuna, gathering fish eggs, fish larvae, and other biological materials, and taking water samples at depth — and train her crew in fisheries research work.

[15] Hugh M. Smith then headed south to the Phoenix Islands,[13] collecting data along the way at hydrographic stations between the French Frigate Shoals and 5°S 172°W / 5°S 172°W / -5; -172, making the last of these observations on 7 February 1950.

[13] Her crew found little mortality among the iao in her bait tanks after reaching 5 degrees South, indicating the practicality of transporting them from Hawaii to the equatorial region.

[15] She returned to Pearl Harbor on 2 March 1950 after 44 days at sea,[12] bringing back tuna stomachs, sections of vertebrae, and female gonads for the study of dietary habits, growth and age, and sexual maturity.

[20] She made observations at 51 hydrographic stations during the outbound and return legs of her cruise, taking water samples from as deep as 4,000 meters (13,123 ft) to determine levels of salinity, dissolved oxygen, and inorganic phosphates and producing 502 bathythermograms.

She used the mullet and frozen herring for seven days of longline fishing for tuna off Canton with excellent results, enjoying over twice the rate of catch experienced using similar equipment off Hawaii.

[19] On 18 August 1950, Hugh M. Smith put back to sea for her sixth cruise, a three-week stint in Hawaiian waters to survey tuna eggs and fry as part of a study of the life cycle and habits of tuna, as well as to test a bronze high-speed depressor — a kite-like device —designed to counteract the tendency of towed scientific gear and trolling lures attached to ordinary weights to rise when towed at speeds greater than 4 miles per hour (3.5 kn; 6.4 km/h).

[23][24] It proved able to remain at a depth of 150 feet (46 m) at speeds as high as 8 to 9 knots (15 to 17 km/h; 9.2 to 10.4 mph)[25] and she used it in trolling operations between 1 and 5 September, albeit without success in catching fish.

[44] While Tradewind′s catch was not outstanding, Hugh M. Smith — which provided Tradewind with fuel and ice in addition to conducting oceanographic surveys and exploratory fishing — had excellent results with experimental longlining, hauling in 8 tons of yellowfin (which she later landed at Kauai for canning) at a rate of 19 fish per hundred hooks a day even though her focus was on studying the distribution of tuna rather than on maximizing her catch.

[45] Departing Pearl Harbor on 25 February 1953 for her 20th FWS cruise, she gathered hydrographic and biological data at 56 stations around the Hawaiian Islands before returning on 4 April 1953.

[45] Plans called for her to conduct a similar major cruise during the summer of 1953 to allow a seasonal comparison of environmental data to shed light on physical, chemical, and biological effects on the distribution of skipjack.

[54] She collected hydrographic, chemistry, and plankton data at 19 stations and made frequent bathythermograph readings during her cruise,[54] which she concluded with her return to Pearl Harbor on 19 June 1954.

[60] The FWS viewed the data she gathered as invaluable to the scientific understanding of the effect of midsummer conditions in the North Pacific on meteorology and on the distribution of albacore and salmon.

[60] Hugh M. Smith got underway from Pearl Harbor on 27 September 1955[61] for her 31st cruise,[62] devoted to investigating the fertility of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico as part of an ongoing series of cruises involving vessels of the FWS and American private institutions and from Canada and Japan devoted to studying physical oceanography, marine biology, and other scientific disciplines over broad areas of the Pacific.

[63] She operated over an area larger than the continental United States,[62] and her activities included 746 bathythermograph casts, some of which demonstrated little latitudinal variation in current boundaries, contrary to expectations;[61] daily plankton tows to a depth of 200 meters (656 ft) made in combination with water-color and Secchi disc observations;[61] and sampling of seawater for dissolved oxygen, inorganic phosphate levels,[61] carbon-14 uptake, and plant pigments.

[67] On 2 March 1956, Hugh M. Smith set out from Pearl Harbor on her 33rd cruise to collect data on the oceanography and biology of a significant upwelling in equatorial waters 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km; 1,200 mi) south of Hawaii.

[68] The upwelling brought fertilizing chemicals from the depths of the ocean to sunlit surface waters, feeding the small fish and squid which in turn provided food for tuna.

[70] Hugh M. Smith also conducted night-light operations at two stations but found few fish, thought to be due to the presence of many squid and oceanic whitetip sharks at all times.

[74] Hugh M. Smith′s 36th cruise took place in Hawaiian waters, where she conducted plankton hauls from mid-October to early November 1956 in support of a study of zooplankton density in the vicinity of Oahu.

[76][77] Hugh M. Smith closed out 1956 with her 37th cruise, made at the request of the Chief of Naval Research, who asked for an oceanographic survey of the waters around Eniwetok Atoll.

[82][83] She drifted 300 nautical miles (560 km; 350 mi) over the next two weeks while awaiting assistance, and her 16-man crew took advantage of the situation to study the Southeast Pacific Gyral by making daily hydrographic casts to a depth of 4,000 feet (1,219 m) to gather data on water temperature and chemistry and by longlining for deep-swimming tuna.

[83][84] After the U.S. Coast Guard seagoing buoy tender USCGC Balsam (WLB-62) arrived from Honolulu with spare parts during February,[83][85][86] Hugh M. Smith effected repairs and resumed her scheduled scientific program, which included the use of carbon-14 to determine the productivity of marine algae, net hauls to capture zooplankton, and special plankton hauls to gather fish larvae to help determine the distribution of young tuna.

[98] Her return to Pearl Harbor on 5 September 1957 completed the survey,[97] which found albacore widely distributed throughout the study area east of 145 degrees West longitude.

[100] She captured, tagged, and released over 300 skipjack, and also collected data on salinity, water temperature and chemistry, plankton, and tuna eggs and larvae on the fishing grounds.

[113] In early January 1959, Hugh M. Smith began her next major cruise — her 50th — to continue the ongoing survey of patterns of skipjack abundance in Hawaiian waters.

[116] She devoted her cruise to studying the southern extension of the California Current and its relationship to the occurrence of skipjack and other marine organisms in the Hawaiian Islands area.