Gomexsi: Toward Standardizing Fish Diet Data for the Gulf of Mexico Large Marine Ecosystem

Managing ocean and coastal fisheries is difficult. Because these fisheries are complex, spatially vast, data poor, and difficult to access and assess, fisheries managers, in part, rely on modeling to answer questions and set policy. As the move toward ecosystem-based fishery management increases, use of fishery ecosystem models (e.g. Ecopath, Atlantis, OSMOSE) will likely increase. In the Gulf of Mexico, until recently, no diet database existed to parameterize these models, which in large part, are dependent on trophic data of living marine resources. The Gulf of Mexico Species Interaction (GoMexSI: gomexsi.tamucc.edu) database project is filling this void by locating, accessing, extracting, editing, standardizing, and serving trophic data for many Gulf taxa. We have extracted data from 103 fish diet data references and received contributed data sets from 30 investigators. These data, spanning over 100 years, are very heterogeneous in prey taxonomic resolution, and number of predator and prey parameters provided. To the extent possible, we are normalizing the data by making conversions to common units, or providing a common taxonomy. As the database grows, we will develop even better data access and tools, and provide a valuable resource for fisheries modelers, ichthyologists, marine ecologists, and other interested citizens, including fishermen.