An Integrated Database and Portal for Fish Stomach Records (DAPSTOM)

In recent years considerable emphasis has been placed on finding 'ecosystem-based' approaches to fisheries management and multispecies models are seen as crucial for addressing this new agenda. However, there are currently, very few long-term datasets within the European context available for parameterising such models. Cefas scientists have collected almost 100 years worth of fish stomach content data, from the seas around the UK (North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea). Much of this data is now available in electronic form, but the information has never been collated into a single database and has always been somewhat inaccessible.

The DAPSTOM project, financed through the 'data rescue' fund of the EU Network of Excellence "EUROCEANS", aims to construct a database of around 80,000 records, and will involve conversion of existing electronic sources as well as the digitisation of additional paper records. The ultimate aim of this project will be to make the data freely accessible to interested researchers throughout Europe, and especially to provide stock-assessment and fisheries scientists with estimates of the prey consumed by particular predators, as well as the levels of predation on particular commercial fish species (including larvae and eggs) by other fish predators. 

Additional data will be added to the DAPSTOM database in early 2008, as a result of project ALSF 04/02, under the Aggregate Levy Sustainabilty Fund.