The core function of the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering (RACE) Division is to conduct quantitative fishery surveys and related ecological and oceanographic research to measure and describe the distribution and abundance of commercially important fish and crab stocks in the eastern Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, Gulf of Alaska, and, historically, the West Coast.The survey data are stored in a database called RACEBASE. It serves as the repository for both raw and summary data collected from the surveys dating from 1953 to present. It does not hold stream data.

Polar Ecosystems Program research projects focus primarily on abundance, trends, distribution, health and condition, and foraging behavior of phocids (harbor, bearded, ringed, spotted, and ribbon seals) in Alaska. This database represents a collection of morphometrics obtained from all of these species across a variety of research projects. Morphometric data were collected from seals that were captured and sampled in the north Pacific, Bering and Chukchi Seas, in 2004-2012, 2014, 2015. There are also morphometric data from ribbon, spotted, and bearded seals that were collected during a research cruise in 1991. Data collected include lengths, girths, mass, and blubber thickness.

Relatively little is known of the diet and foraging behaviors of the four species of ice-associated seals (ribbon seal, bearded seal, spotted seal, and ringed seal) and harbor seals in Alaska. What is known comes largely from stomach contents of animals harvested during subsistence hunting near coastal communities. Diet and foraging ecology are likely highly sensitive to the availability of suitable habitats and sea ice conditions. They may be particularly vulnerable to climatic change and other disruptions from more direct anthropogenic effects such as offshore oil and gas development. Our ability to predict and manage for such impacts, however, is limited by our inadequate knowledge of seal ecology. This database contains diet data obtained by scat samples from seals across a variety of research projects. Scat samples were collected from ribbon and spotted seals in the pack ice in the Bering Sea during April, May, and June of 2007-2010, and 2014. The diet data in this database were obtained by analyzing otoliths from these scats. Scat samples have also been collected from harbor seals from Lake Iliamna in July-August 2015, and from the Aleutian Islands in September 2015. Diet data based on otoliths from these scats will also be recorded in this dataset.