The University of Washington Fish Collection (UWFC) database is a dynamic resource, with new records being added and editing taking place frequently. Due to the long history of the collection, there are inconsistencies in the way that names have been used in the database. This can cause records to be unintentionally excluded from your search. Extra care should be taken when using geographic names for searches (Region, Country, State, and County). Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve these inconsistencies and strive to make the database a better resource. The UWFC search engine is not case-sensitive and you only need to fill in the fields that you would like to limit in your search. A good general strategy for searches is to enter the criteria you wish to search on. You can then sort the returned records by clicking on any of the column headings. This way you can progressively limit your search with choices presented to you from the database.

Collection to Search
The UWFC is divided into the Adult Collection and the Larval, or Early Life History (ELH) Collection. You may search either collection separately or search the entire collection by selecting the "both" button.

Tissues
We are building our tissue collection and it is now possible to search our database for tissues by clicking on the "Records with Tissue Samples" button. Tissues are maintained in 95% Ethanol and are available to researchers. Please contact the Collections Manager if you would like to request tissue samples.

Family, Genus, and Species
You can see an alphabetical listing of our entire holdings by clicking on the "Show List" link next to the Family, Genus, and Species search options. Select the desired search term and it will automatically be placed in the search field on the main search page. As is the case with most natural history collections, there are many synonyms within the database. Be sure to broaden your search to include the synonyms of the desired taxon. A good resource for finding synonyms is FishBase.

Catalog Number, Accession Number, and Field Number
The UWFC catalog number should be in the format "UW ######" where each # represents a number (eg. UW 004520). Accession and field numbers used in the collection vary, and unless you already have a specific number these fields are difficult to search with.

NMFS Taxon Code
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) assigns a code number to each taxon name. These numbers are only used for specimens donated to the larval (ELH) collection by NMFS.

Region, Country, State, County, and Drainage
A list of all of the Regions available to search is given as a drop-down menu. This is not available for the Country, State, County, and Drainage fields. When limiting your search by any of these categories you may be unintentionally excluding records. For example, when searching for taxa within coastal regions, be sure to search under the ocean region as well as the continent region that would be appropriate (eg. Eastern North Pacific and North America). We are working to establish consistent naming conventions within the UWFC database to minimize these difficulties.

Collector, Vessel, Gear, and Maturity
Collector names can be written in a multitude of formats, causing records to be excluded. Use "Contains" and a small portion of the name, or multiple versions such as initials and the beginning of the name. Vessel and Gear searches will be most useful to users who are familiar with the collection or who are searching for something specific. The "contains" operator will be most useful. Maturity options available to search include Adult, Juvenile, Larva, and Egg.

Latitude and Longitude
Not all records contain latitude and longitude data, so searching on either of these fields limits the returned records not only by geo-location, but by whether or not the field contains data for a given record (those that are blank are excluded). All records that have data for these fields are in decimal degrees with direction expressed as either positive or negative. North and East are positive and West and South are negative. For example, 47.651 North and 122.314 West would be expressed as 47.651 and -122.314. Another important thing to note is that when using "Contains" you should place the decimal point. For example if you were to search Longitude for anything that "Contains" 130 (without placing the decimal) you would not only return 130.334 but also 170.130. These are the only fields that are doubled in the search interface. Doing so allows the use of four coordinates and appropriate greater than and less than operators to create a bounding box which can then return records within a square.

Date Collected
You may search by Month and/or Year.

Group Returned Records
This allows the records returned from your search to be sorted into groups before display. You can group records by region or species name. For example, if you choose to search on a genus and group by species, you will see a list of all the species contained in the database for that genus. Clicking a species name in the list will display the records for that species. Grouping can be done before you submit your initial search or after the results are returned. This allows you to enter the criteria you wish to search on. After the record set returns you can then group the returned records by clicking on any of the column headings. This way you can progressively limit your search with choices presented to you from the database.

Records per Page
This controls the number of records returned per page for ease of viewing.

Equals
To specify an exact match in a field, select the "Equals" operator from the drop-down list between the field name and the text entry box. Then type the text you want to search for in the box.

Contains
To construct a "wild card" search select "Contains" from the operator drop-down list between the field name and the text box. Then type the text pattern you want to search for in the box. Note that wildcards are automatic on both sides of any partial entry once this operator is selected.

Greater Than, Less Than, Greater or Equal, and Less or Equal
Used for numeric fields these operators allow for returning a range of values.

To enhance your search abilities, you can also use the underscore character ( _ ) to match any single character at that position. The underscore character can be used multiple times and in combination, as required to specify your matching pattern. For example, selecting Catalog Number and "Contains" from the drop down lists and entering 'UW 00_520' would match any character at the underscore position (UW 004520, UW 005520 etc.).