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History of Collection

The Florida State Board of Conservation established the Marine Laboratory at Bayboro Harbor, St. Petersburg, Florida in 1955. The Ichthyology Collection, which currently contains more then 18,000 catalogued lots, was begun in 1956 to house reference and voucher specimens collected by Victor G. Springer and Kenneth D. Woodburn during their ecological study of the fishes of the Tampa Bay area. The Ichthyology Collection has been managed by Ramon Ruiz-Carus since 1989. The Invertebrate Collection, which currently contains more then 67,000 catalogued lots, was begun in 1965 after the agency initiated Project Hourglass, a program of long-term, monthly sampling of 10 fixed stations on the continental shelf in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. This 28-month program was initiated to define and describe the biological communities on the central West Florida Shelf. The Invertebrate Collection has been managed by Sandra Farrington since 1971. Specimens are accessioned into the Ichthyology and Invertebrate collections under the acronyms FSBC F and FSBC I respectively. These acronyms are recognized nationally and internationally by the scientific community.

The Invertebrate Collection is recognized as a regional research resource by the Association of Systematics Collections and as a regional repository for voucher specimens by the National Science Foundation. The collection is also listed as a Regional Repository in "Resources in Invertebrate Systematics," prepared by the Joint Committee on Systematic Resources in Invertebrate Zoology of the American Society of Zoologists. The laboratory received a grant from the National Science Foundation in the 1980s to acquire compactorized shelf carriers.

The Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) began in 1982. At that time, FWC-FWRI agreed to become the permanent repository for the ichthyoplankton collected from throughout the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. This cooperative state-federal program is a fisheries-independent monitoring program that has contributed more than 273,000 catalogued lots to the SEAMAP Collection. This collection is currently managed by Kimberly Williams.

Over the years, the catalogued specimens in these collections have been identified by taxononomic experts from FWRI and numerous state, national, and international institutions. These collections are a fifty-year record of biodiversity in the complex marine and estuarine environments covering the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean waters off Florida's east coast, and the Caribbean Sea.

Description of the Ichthyology Collection Holdings

The preserved biological specimens and the associated ecological database are a rich resource of Florida's biodiversity information. The Ichthyology Collection represents the time period 1955 to present. The specimens were collected in Florida's marine and estuarine habitats, and occasionally in neighboring waters; they exemplify the juvenile and adult life-stages of Florida's diverse fish fauna. The acronym FSBC F identifies the specimens catalogued in the Ichthyology Collection.

To request additional information, please contact:

Dr. Ramon Ruiz-Carus
Ichthyology Collection Manager
FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
100 8th Avenue SE
St. Petersburg, FL 33701-5095
(727) 896-8626 Fax (727) 823-0166
E-mail: Fishcoll@MyFWC.com