20th anniversary of the PINRO-IMR cooperation in the investigations of fish feeding in the Barents Sea: results and perspectives

Abstract

Since 1986 the Institute of Marine Research, (IMR), Norway and the Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO), Russia, have carried out a joint research program on the trophic relationships in the Barents Sea. As part of this program, the two institutions have exchanged quantitative diet data from fish in the Barents Sea, mainly cod. Diet data can give information about important trophic links in the ecosystem and the strenght of those links. Therefore, diet data is important for quantifying interactions between fish stocks, e.g. by calculating how natural mortality due to predation influences their dynamics. In this paper we give an overview of diet data collected by IMR and PINRO during the last 20 years, and present some results and perspectives for future work.