GUTSHOP '84 was the fourth in a series of workshops on various aspects of fish feeding (Table 1). Initially, the organizers merely invited regional (Pacific Northwest) fisheries scientists to share, and possibly develop mutual solutions to, the many technical problems associated with trying to obtain meaningful, quantitative information from fish stomach contents, and the subsequent statistical treatment and interpretation of the multivariate data. Since then, although not explicitly based upon any internal cycle, these scientists and increasingly more and more dispersed colleagues continued to congregate for workshop deliberations every two or three years. From the 49 attendees at the first workshop, the number of participants had grown to 65 at GUTSHOP '78, and 107 at GUTSHOP '81. By the third workshop, we were drawing scientists from across the U. S. and Canada, and from as far away as Norway. The topical content of the workshops has also evolved from the predominantly technical aspects of fish collection and stomach contents processing techniques, statistical analysis, and data manipulation and presentation to considerations of theoretical ecology, bioenergetics, and behavior.