Alaska Ichthyoplankton Information System Database
December 29, 2017
This database includes data on the early life history of fisheries collected by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's Recruitment Processes Program, including Ecosystem and Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (Eco-FOCI).
About
Welcome to the Northeast Pacific Ichthyoplankton Information System (IIS). This site allows the user to access data on the early life history of fish collected by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) Recruitment Processes Program, which includes Ecosystem & Fisheries-Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (Eco-FOCI). The site can be used to either identify fish eggs and larvae by using known data such as meristics, distribution, and illustrations of developmental stages or as a source of original data on the early life history stages of fish of the Northeast Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea, and Beaufort Sea. In addition, we present useful interactive links to ICLARM's FishBase and the University of Washington's Fish Collection Archive.
The IIS site integrates these sources into an interactive research tool, providing one-stop shopping are for information about ichthyoplankton of the Northeast Pacific and Arctic.
History
Since the 1960's the Recruitment Processes Program at AFSC has been collecting and identifying fish eggs and larvae from the Bering Sea, the Arctic (Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea), Northeast Pacific waters off Alaska, and the coastal waters off Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. A taxonomic guide to the early life history stages of the more than 200 fish that spawn in these areas was published in 1989 (Matarese et al., 1989).
In 2003, a synoptic atlas presenting data on spatial and temporal trends in the dominant fish eggs and larvae from these regions was completed (Matarese et al., 2003). These publications, in addition to advances in regional ichthyoplankton taxonomy (e.g., Moser, 1996; Busby, 1998) and a meta-database of EcoFOCI cruise data, have been brought together here to provide a wealth of information not available anywhere else.
Update Frequency
Updates are made on a yearly basis; a lag time of six years is applied to distributional data. Users are encouraged to provide updated or new data relating to the taxa listed.