Beginning in 1951, British ocean weather vessels began oceanographic research, such as monitoring plankton, casting of drift bottles, and sampling seawater.
In 1962, British weather vessels measured sea temperature and salinity values from the surface down to 3000 m as part of their duties.
A new international agreement for ocean weather vessels was reached through the World Meteorological Organization in 1975, which eliminated Ships I (India) and J (Juliett), and left ships M ("Mike"), R ("Romeo"), C ("Charlie"), and L ("Lima") across the northern Atlantic, with the four remaining ships in operation through 1983.
Risks vary with each type of fishing, the fishing grounds and weather conditions, vessel size, equipment carried and the job of each fisherman.
The Secretary must consider standards for minimum safe operating conditions, including sea state, wave height, weather, vessel traffic, the prevention of oil spills, and oil spill response equipment.
The Korean War led to the discontinuing of weather vessel O ("Oboe") on July 31 , 1950in the Pacific, and ship S ("Sugar") was established on September 10 , 1950
Weather vessel Q ("Quebec") began operation in the north-central Pacific on April 6 , 1952 while in the western Atlantic, the British corvettes used as weather ships were replaced by newer Castle-class frigates between 1958 and 1961.
Also in the Pacific, weather ship A ("Able") was renamed ship P Peterer") and moved 200 mile to the east-northeast in December 1949, while weather vessel F ("Fox") was renamed N ("Nan").
The primary purpose of an ocean weather vessel was to take surface and upper air weather measurements, and report them via radio at the synoptic hours of 0000, 0600, 1200, and 1800 Universal Coordinated Time (UTC).
In the Atlantic, weather vessel F ("Fox") was discontinued on September 3 , 1949 and there was a change in location for ships D ("Dog") and E ("Easy") at the same time.
By 1982, the ocean weather vessel role had changed too, and the ships were used to support short range weather forecasting, in numerical weather prediction computer programs which forecast weather conditions several days ahead, for climatological studies, marine forecasting, and oceanography, as well as monitoring pollution out at sea.
