NES-LTER: Diet Composition for Small Pelagic Fishes across the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf from 2013-2015

• Main Author: Suca, Justin J
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Environmental Data Initiative 2019
• Subjects: Nes; Nes’; Northwest Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/2c73b8845ddfe36fc1647f886bbd01d2; https://portal.edirepository.org/nis/mapbrowse?packageid=knb-lter-nes.2.1

These data represent the diet composition of small pelagic fishes across the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf as reported by Suca, J.J., et al. (2018) Feeding dynamics of Northwest Atlantic small pelagic fishes. Progress in Oceanography, 165, 52-62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2018.04.014. These data were analyzed to derive the data products provided in the Supplementary Material to this article. The five species of fish in this dataset represent a subset of the species collected in bottom trawls conducted by the NOAA NEFSC Ecosystems Survey Branch from Cape Hatteras to the Gulf of Maine for years 2013-2015. Sampling occurred in the Spring and Fall seasons. Fish were frozen and stomach content analyses were conducted by members of the Llopiz Lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Data are counts for prey items examined under a dissecting microscope. Fish and prey species were matched to the lowest taxonomic level in the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) for scientific name and taxonomic serial number. The dataset was supplemented with geospatial and temporal information from NOAA Fisheries trawl databases.