A trawl collected dataset of (Actinopterygii, Sciaenidae) species in central-western Taiwanese waters.

Background: Sciaenidae is one of the most important coastal fisheries in Taiwan, both in production and economic value. It is also significant as the main targetted diet of Chinese white dolphins, , especially for the genus , such as , and , which is primarily found in central-western Taiwan coastal waters. Despite an abundance of species occurrences reported in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility (TaiBIF) data portals (Mozambique, Australia, Taiwan, Korea, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Pakistan, Vietnam and China), there are no specific datasets that properly document the regional distribution of this genus, especially in Taiwanese waters. Thus, this paper describes a dataset of genus occurrences in waters on the central-western coast of Taiwan. The data collection for the present study was conducted from 2009 until 2020 and comprised 62 sampling events and 133 occurrence records. All fish specimens were collected by trawling in Miaoli, Changhwa and Yunlin Counties, Taiwan and brought back to the lab for identification, individual number count and body weight measurement. These processing data have been integrated and established in the Taiwan Fish Database and published in GBIF. This dataset contains six species and 2,566 specimens, making it comprehensive fish fauna and spatial distributional data on the coastal habitat in central-western Taiwanese waters.

New Information: This dataset contains 133 occurrence records of species (Sciaenidae) with 2,566 specimens, making it the most extensive public dataset of distribution records in Taiwan. The publication of this dataset through the TaiBIF and GBIF dataset platforms demonstrated that the number of spatial and temporal records in Taiwan waters is influenced by the topographical structure of the Changyun Rise (CYR) in combination with the cold current of the China Coastal currents and bound with the warm currents of the Kuroshio and the South China Sea on the central-western coast of Taiwan. The data serve as the foundation for understanding the biogeography and species ecology in Taiwan's coastal waters, which present a 2°C water temperature difference split at the CYR.