IPY Activity #1087
Western Arctic Marine Fish Museum Records, New Collections, Taxonomic Studies, and Atlas (Arctic Marine Fishes)
Activity leader
Catherine Mecklenburg, California Academy of Sciences & Point Stephens Research
Project goals
This project aims to resolve problematic taxonomy, improve accuracy of identifications, and determine historical and current ranges of Arctic marine fishes. The overall project goal for the IPY has been to focus intently and make significant progress within the IPY timeframe. The project developed a database on species occurrence and continues to evaluate museum and recent specimens and collection records to expand the online database. On expeditions, the project collects fishes for taxonomic research and documentation of species presence, including tissue samples for DNA sequencing. Previous data as well as the projects’ results are incorporated in online species accounts and reported in presentations and publications.
Geographic focus
Arctic Siberia, Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and high Arctic
Taxonomic focus
Fishes
Countries involved in activity
United States, Canada and Russia
Expedition dates and vessels
Semidi Islands, western Gulf of Alaska, July 2007, USFWS RV Tiglax; Chukchi Sea and northern Bering Sea, August and September 2008, NOAA RV Oscar Dyson. The RUSALCA cruise to East Siberian and Chukchi Seas planned for late summer 2008 was postponed to 2009. The project also identified and archived specimens submitted frozen or preserved from other cruises, such as the Hokkaido University Faculty of Fisheries Oshoro Maru cruises to Chukchi Sea in 2007 and 2008, and a NOAA NMFS survey in the Beaufort Sea in 2008.
