Cetacean Strandings around the UK Coast (Stomach Content Analysis)

Since 1990, the collaborative UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) has been funded by UK government (currently by Defra and the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales), to record all strandings of cetaceans around the UK coast and to retrieve a proportion for investigation at post-mortem. The principal aim of this project is to process stored stomach samples from up to 160 small cetaceans that have been necropsied under the CSIP in recent years. We will provide summary data that describes the species composition of the stomach contents on an individual animal basis and we will augment these data with a backlog of samples from previously examined animals that have been conducted as a series of student projects over the last 20 years.