NOAA Ship John N. Cobb was NOAA's oldest research vessel. It was built in 1950 with a wooden hull, along the lines of Pacific trawler designs of that time. The ship was named after John N. Cobb, an early fisheries researcher and the first dean of the University of Washington School of Fisheries.

While active, John N. Cobb conducted fishery and living marine resource research in Southeast Alaska and in U.S. Pacific coastal waters, supporting the research of the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service's Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau, Alaska. The ship collected fish and crustacean specimens using trawls and benthic longlines, fish larvae and eggs, and plankton using plankton nets and surface and midwater larval nets. John N. Cobb was capable of conducting bottom trawls down to depths of over 300 fathoms (1,800 ft.). Marine mammal surveys of whales, porpoise, and seals were also conducted aboard by scientists from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, Washington. John N. Cobb's home port was at the Marine Operations Center-Pacific, in Seattle, Washington.