Objective
The project mainly aims at an analysis of existing databases on stomach contents. The stomachs have been analysed already and the results are available on computer systems. Stomach data will analysed for five predator species: cod, whiting, haddock, saithe and mackerel with regard to the following goals:
A. analysis of change over time: the 1991 data will for all species be compared with an equivalent data set from 1981. For cod and whiting the comparison will include data from 1985-1987, for cod also from 1980, 1982 and 1984;
B. analysis of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of feeding : among other tasks an analysis of the effects of variability of the total stomach contents and the shares of fish prey classes in the predator stomach will be undertaken together with the assessment of prey size preferences,prey switching, the effects of competition between predators and local suitabilities;
C. inter ecosystem comparison:
The comparative analysis between different ecosystems will have its starting point from the results of the analysis of the North Sea data. The main ecosystem for comparison will be the Baltic, because large subsets of these data are accessible at two of the participating institutes. The comparison with the Baltic system is restricted to cod being the only important predator in the Baltic system. Cooperation is also planned with scientists from the USA and Norway. In the case of the USA, the data refers to cod and haddock stomachs from the Georges Bank area, while Norwegian data is available from cod of the Barents Sea.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
D-22767 Hamburg
Germany