The Science in FishBase

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The Science in FishBase
Rainer Froese Germany rfroese_at_ifm-geomar.de
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The Vision

• Back in 1987, two scientists had an idea
• Create a database with key-information on 200
  commercial fish species
• Use it for research
• Make it available to 500 fisheries managers in
  developing countries
• 19 years later
• www.fishbase.org contains information on 29,000
  species
• Has over 1,000 citations in the scientific
  literature
• Has about 2 million visitors per month in the
  Internet

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If these stocks were Stocks
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The Race to 100 Million
2008
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It Looks Like This
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And This
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Where is the Science?
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Information systems as icebergs
Views for end-users (VEU)
VEU
VEU
VEU
VEU
VEU
TS
TS
TS
TS
TS
Tables for specialists (TS)
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Depth Distribution of Sharks
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Brains of Elasmobranchs
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Brains of Deep Sea Fishes
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Occupation of Size-Troph Space
Distribution of 20,054 Fishes in Size-Trophic
Level Space
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Occupation of Size-Productivity Space
Distribution of Fishes in Size-Productivity Space
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Who is Using it?
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Where?
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What?
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Where is the Science?85 ISI Citations, 3 in
Nature, 2 in Science (June 2002)
IT
June 2002
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Google Scholar, April 2006 1610 citations,
including 5 in Nature and 7 in Science
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Link-Analysis
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What Else can FishBase Do? Invasive
Species
Aquarium Fishes which may Establish themselves in
Hawaii (6 of 111)
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More Applications Trends in Global Catches
(Froese and Pauly 2003)
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What Can You Do?

• Stop Overfishing
• Let them Spawn
• Dont Eat Baby Fish
• Get the FisherMin ruler

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Greetings from the FishBase Team
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Thanks to our Partners and Sponsors