June 11, 2026 — When it comes to breadth and depth, few fisheries education programs today can rival the University of Rhode Island’s two-year Fisheries and Marine Technology degree program, which ran for almost 20 years from 1967 to 1985. “The market doesn’t need it anymore,” said Dr. Joe DeAlteris, who was hired in 1983 to transition the associate degree program to a four-year bachelor’s degree. “Most of what we taught back then is obsolete now, anyway.”
True enough. Technology has replaced many of the skills taught in the intensive, 19-credit-per-semester program. “We taught students how to make nets, for example,” said DeAlteris. “Nobody makes their own nets now. A lot of times, they don’t even repair them; they bring them to a net loft. And who uses celestial navigation?”
Andreas Holmsen, a Norwegian resource economist, and Bert Hillier, a retired fisherman from Newfoundland, started the associate degree program in 1967. Besides navigation and net building, students learned everything that would be expected of them on a commercial fishing vessel. Courses included vessel safety and stability, COLREGS rules of the road, diesel and hydraulic engineering, welding, fish processing and preservation, commercial fishing gear types, and the micro- and macroeconomic basics needed to run a business. But by 1985, New England fisheries were contracting, and the Fisheries and Marine Technology program was folded into a broader bachelor’s degree major.