Search the VIMS Ichthyological Collection

VIMS has one of the largest and most diverse collections of marine and estuarine temperate zone fishes from Nova Scotia to North Carolina. The collection has extensive large holdings of fishes from the Chesapeake Bay, and middle Atlantic Bight. The collection also includes large and diverse holdings of demersal deep-sea fishes from the western North Atlantic. VIMS also became the repository for the fish collection of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (Solomons, MD) in 1978. The CBL collection consists primarily of freshwater and estuarine fishes of the upper Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. In addition, a smaller collection from Virginia Commonwealth University was acquired in 1985. The collection also has holdings of Virginia freshwater fishes; including a 25 year series of collections from the southern Appalachians; the freshwater holdings were enhanced substantially by accession of the University of Richmond (UR) collection in 1993.

The collection contains approximately 20,000 cataloged lots of fishes comprising 128,000 specimens in 247 families. Of these lots, 16,000 lots are computer cataloged. The computer records are fully querable by object and locality fields and reports based on these data are available.

Contacts:   Dr. John A. Musick, Professor of Marine Science, and Paul Gerdes, collection manager