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The Macleay Collections house some 1570 fish specimens.

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The Ichthyology Department has a collection of some 3500 specimens (mostly from Alberta) preserved in ethanol but good representative collections of disarticulated skeletons and cryo-preserved tissues are also maintained.

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The Ichthyology Section holds about one third of the 25,000 known fish species. Both fresh and saltwater fish species from all over the world are represented.

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The Freshwater Ichthyology collection comprises 14 200 accessions which total some 250 000 specimens, mostly stored in alcohol. Type specimens are housed separately. There is a growing collection of early life history stages of fishes which includes eggs, embryos and larval fish. These are all well documented with drawings and photographs, an essential prerequisite, in view of the dynamic nature of development. To supplement the wet collections there are skeletal, x-ray and colour slide collections. Copies of original collection sheets are also maintained and the entire collection database is computerised.
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The Fish collections hold many old specimens dating from the 1740s. Images and information on the old collections are available at the museum's Linnaeus Web Server. It is estimated that today's fish collection includes more than 350,000 specimens in about 50,000 lots. More than 6,350 species are represented. More than 33,226 lots have been computer catalogued. The access to the computer database can be accessed in three (3) ways:

• through the NRM Ichthyology Collection Search Database,
• through the Neotropical Collection Resources in NEODAT II, and
• through the FishGopher

Collections are from all over the world and include representatives of most of the currently recognised fish families. Important parts of the fish collection come from South American and South East Asian freshwaters, and we consequently concentrate fish research in those areas. Of course, there is a good representation of Swedish freshwater fish.

The "commonest" fish species in the collection are perch (Perca fluviatilis) in 490 jars, african lungfish (Protopterus annectens) in 487 jars, and roach (Rutilus rutilus) in 470 jars. Almost all the collection is preserved in alcohol (75-80% pure ethanol in distilled water). There are also a few mounted skeletons, occasional skins, many mounted fishes, alizarin transparencies for particular research projects and some otoliths.
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The Ichthyology Department holds some 1.5 million fish specimens in 120,000 lots making this fish collection the fifth ranked International Ichthyological Resource Center in the U.S. and Canada. The collection ranks in size among the ten largest in North America.The collection is world-wide in scope with good geographic and taxonomic coverage. Approximately 10,500 species, 3,065 genera and 366 families of fishes are represented. The collection is strongest in neotropical fishes (freshwater and marine), North American fishes (freshwater and east coast marine) and Indian Ocean shorefishes. Neotropical holdings include more than 41,000 lots, with concentration in Colombian, Venezuelan, and Peruvian collections, ranking first in size among the computerized holding of the major participants of the NEODAT Project (see the NEODAT Gopher for detail). The Academy's holdings of anguilliformes,tetraodontiformes and carangids are especially strong. Other groups of fishes that are prominent in the collection include: characoids, cyprinoids, neotropical catfishes, sunfishes, gobies, blennies, serranids and flatfishes. There is a world-wide collection of marine shorefishes, but are notably weak in pelagic and deep-sea forms. Anyone who studies marine and estuarine fishes along the Atlantic seaboard will find it essential to consult the Academy's important collections from off-New Jersey and Delaware. Major Academy expeditions and research in South America (Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and Colombia), Central America (Costa Rica), the western Atlantic (Bermuda, Bahamas and Lesser Antilles) and the Indian Ocean (Seychelles and Cocos-Keeling Islands) have resulted in comprehensive collections vital to anyone attempting taxonomic studies of fishes from these areas.
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