The Southeast Fisheries Center Bionumeric Code. 



Part I: Fishes 



By 



HARVEY R. BULLIS, JR. 



National Marine Fisheries Service 



Southeast Fisheries Center 



Miami, FL 33149 



and 



RICHARD B. ROE and JUDITH C. GATLIN 



National Marine Fisheries Service 



Southeast Fisheries Center 



Pascagoula, MS 39567 



ABSTRACT 



The Southeast Fisheries Center, Pascagoula, Mississippi Laboratory uses a nine- 

 digit numeric code to catalog marine organisms. The basic code was adapted from the 

 FAO taxonomic code developed in 1960, to which generic and specific levels were 

 added and considerable classification modifications adopted. 



This publication provides the code listing for fishes. Succeeding publications will 

 deal with such groups as Crustacea, mollusca, and various invertebrates. 



INTRODUCTION 



At the request of the biological and fisheries 

 panel of the Cooperative Investigations of the 

 Caribbean and Adjacent Regions (CICAR) a 

 numeric code for biological names as employed 

 by the National Marine Fisheries Service's 

 Southeast Fisheries Center is presented for 

 use in the intercalibration of biological data 

 between participating members of the Program. 

 For the purposes of meeting CICAR program 

 needs, priority consideration has been given to 

 releasing codes covering three major faunal 

 groups: fishes, crustaceans, and mollusks. The 

 present paper constitutes the first of these three 



' Contribution No. 231, National Marine Fisheries 

 Service, Southeast Fisheries Center, Pascagoula Labora- 

 tory, Pascagoula, Miss. 39567. 



categories to meet the immediate coding require- 

 ments of the CICAR juvenile fish project. 



The Southeast Fisheries Center's Pascagoula 

 Laboratory, Pascagoula, Miss., has amassed 

 over 200,000 records on some 30,000 nominal 

 species of marine organisms since 1950, and 

 were it not for a numeric coding system for 

 inventorying and processing faunal data the 

 usefulness of this valuable library would be 

 severely limited. The present code is an adapta- 

 tion from a 5-digit code developed by FAO 

 (1960) to catalog families of aquatic organisms. 

 We expanded the code by adding generic and 

 specific levels and have extensively rearranged 

 and added taxa at all levels to accommodate 

 the large number of species present in the Gulf 

 and Caribbean area. Bullis and Roe (1967) 

 describe the development and structure of this 

 code. 



