Data base report of the stomach sampling project 1981

The Stomach Sampling Project 1981 represents a major example of the integrated studies carried out under the ICES umbrella in recent years. It was aimed at quantitative answers to the question 'Who eats who?' among the exploited fish species in the North Sea. Many colleagues have shown a keen interest in the project and the collection of samples at sea has been a shared task of all countries having interests in the North Sea fisheries. The analysis of tonnes of half-digested material has been a burden for a few species coordinators and data processing has been a complex task. Thanks to all these efforts, reliable answers have been obtained in the end. As a scientific reward, our perception of the effects of species interactions has changed considerably and multispecies assessment has become a valued tool in preparing management advice. 

Over the years, data availability and computational methods have kept changing and various sets of results have been used at different occasions. We, the species coordinators, believe that the data have now reached their ultimate quality and, since the project appeared to deserve an extensive documentation of the methods employed, basic information as well as selected results have been tabulated in this Cooperative Research Report.