A new electronic archive has been assembled containing records of the data collected by salmon research vessels in the North Pacific Ocean and its marginal seas since the middle of the 20th century. Most of the data were collected under the auspices of the INPFC (International North Pacific Fisheries Commission) that existed from 1953–1992. It had three member countries (Canada, Japan, and the United States of America) that were interested, primarily, in determining the vulnerability of salmon produced by their nations to capture by high seas salmon fishing, primarily by the Japanese. The INPFC coordinated the most comprehensive international scientific investigation of the biology of salmon in the open ocean in history. As political interest in knowing about the biology of salmon on the high seas waned in the 1970s, the various agencies involved in exploratory salmon fishing expeditions have exhibited variable levels of care for the records of biological significance that were generated during this era. These data are important because they continue to form the basis of what is known about Pacific salmon abundance and distribution beyond the continental shelves. Contemporary and future assessments of change must be compared to these records.
In late 2024, the archive (Version 1.3.1) currently includes 50,832 fishing operations (position, date, catch, effort, SST) and 1,170,207 salmon examined (length, weight, sex, age, gonad size). Missing data in some fields are common. Much of the archive contains what had previously been transcribed into various electronic formats by different agencies at different times since the 1960s. The present effort was to develop a common format and coding system for measurements and observations that were shared in common by different agencies. Fortunately, scientists working under INPFC had established data exchange protocols and standards so much of the basic data about salmon was collected and recorded using similar methods.
10.23849/t1wb-y481
