Nothing as exciting as cod stomachs

What can a marine biologist do when weather is too bad to roam the seas in search of capelin? Well, in the Davoren lab you can look into Atlantic cod diet! Through local fishermen, we collected Atlantic cod stomachs to look into their diet, particularly capelin presence.

Atlantic cod's diet was found to be very broad and can contain crab, sea star, amphipod, jellyfish and fish. Thus, cod stomachs possibly contain new surprises, making our team of biologists feel like kids on Christmas morning.

The excitement always reach a peak when fish are found, but especially otoliths! Otoliths are small calcified structure found in the head of fish that allows us to identify the species (particularly useful when the fish is fully digested).

Top picture : Our team excited by the find of otoliths

Bottom picture : Otolithes of an unknown species of fish