“4VSW” missions focus on the eastern half of the Scotian Shelf, and occur primarily in March, but sets in both February, and April are also present in the data. These missions use a unique stratification scheme intended to optimize the abundance estimates of cod. Collected data includes total catch in numbers and weights by species. Length frequency data is available for most species, as are the age, sex, maturity and weight information for a subset of the individual animals. Other data such as ageing material, genetic material, and stomach contents are often also collected, but are stored elsewhere.