"Tuscarora" was transferred to the North Pacific Station on 11 October 1874 and left for Honolulu on 1 November with orders to take soundings of the ocean bottom every . She remained at Honolulu through January 1875. The vessel touched at Samoa in March and returned to Honolulu in June and to San Francisco in July. She left in September and performed survey work in the South Pacific, visiting the Fiji Islands, Australia, and Samoa. During her voyages, she made over 500 ocean floor soundings and temperature readings, discovering the depth of the Japan Trench and the Aleutian Trench. She returned to San Francisco and was decommissioned at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 14 September 1876. "Tuscarora" was laid up for repairs during 1877.