Oscar Elton Sette

Oscar Elton Sette (March 29, 1900 - July 25, 1972), who preferred to be called Elton Sette, was an influential 20th-century American fisheries scientist. During a five-decade career with the United States Bureau of Fisheries, United States Fish and Wildlife Service and its Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, Sette pioneered the integration of fisheries science with the sciences of oceanography and meteorology to develop a complete understanding of the physical and biological characteristics of the ocean environment and the effects of those characteristics on fisheries and fluctuations in the abundance of fish. defined as the "appraisal or exploitation of any kind of [marine] organism useful to Man" Sette supervised the bureau's research in fishery technology, particularly the canning and preservation of fishery products, as well the distribution of technological and production information on fisheries to the public. He also was responsible for a special effort to improve the United States Government′s system of collecting and publishing fisheries statistics. He wrote annual statistical arid economic reports of United States fisheries and articles concerning commercial fisheries for bureau publications and trade journals. in 1971.

As director of the Ocean Ecology unit, Sette continued work on various issues in fisheries science, including an analysis of the Alaska herring fishery, until his death.

Since 1991, the Marine Fisheries Section of the American Fisheries Society has presented the annual Oscar E. Sette Award, named in honor of Sette, to each year's outstanding marine fishery biologist, for "sustained excellence in marine fishery biology through research, teaching, administration, or a combination of the three."

For over a decade, scientists at the California State Fisheries Laboratory used the "sette" as a unit of measurement, named in honor of Sette. The "sette" was equal to half a centimeter, which Sette during his time at the laboratory had determined to be appropriate for the measurement of Pacific mackerel. The "sette" eventually fell into disuse when scientists at the laboratory began to seek more precise measurements of fish.