From 6-9th September in Kiel, FishBase celebrates its anniversary with founding developers Dr Rainer Froese (left) at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) developed the database together with Dr Daniel Pauly (right) Professor at the University of British Columbia.

“FishBase has something for every user”, says Dr Rainer Froese, fishery biologist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) and co-founder of FishBase. “Biologists, for example, are able to find information about the morphology, metabolism, brain size, diet composition or the speed of fishes.

"Conservationists can obtain information on endangered species. Anglers and scuba divers can create their own database of fish they have seen or caught. The fishing industry can monitor the resilience of different species. We have even included the Bismarck herring and the butterfish for consumers who just want to check what’s on the menu.”



The database is not only provided in English, German and Spanish, but in Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Farsi and Hindi, so that the service can be used all over the world.

“We work with about 500 different partners worldwide, who share their latest findings with us”, says Froese. Nearly every day the FishBase team is able to add a new species to the database.

“There isn’t a lot left to detect in the Northern Hemisphere, but the deep-sea and the coral reefs south of the equator still hide many secrets from us biologists – not to mention the rivers in South America, Africa or Asia.”

Froese is not just collecting; he is fascinated by every single animal. “Every day, we are amazed by the many different colours and shapes – and by the extremes that animals show us – the smallest vertebrate, for example, is a fish (left) which is shorter than a thumbnail.Nevertheless it has the same blueprint as a 20 meter long whale shark."

The first idea for FishBase can be traced back to the 1970's, when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) considered providing  identification catalogues in electronic form. Drs Pauly and Froese picked up the thought and they convinced the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM), based on the Philippines, to submit a proposal to the European Union in 1988

It was successful. By 1991 the first 10 floppy disks database was released, later followed by CD-ROMs. A decade later in October 1998, FishBase appeared online – and the continuously growing library was now internationally available.



The annual meeting at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel will be attended by scientists from all over the world Among the speakers at the “20 years of FishBase Symposium”, are team members and supporters.

Emily Capuli presents the FishBase-Team, which consistently adds the information to the database. Speakers from China, Africa, South America and Europe will illustrate the work in the different regions of the world. Kostas Stergiou from the Aristoteles University Thessaloniki will talk about the influence of FishBase on science. Over 1000 citations in the primary literature have made FishBase a “Citation Classic”.

Maria Lourdes Palomares, (left) University of British Columbia, will provide a view into the future of FishBase: “Extending FishBase to non-fishes” is the name of her lecture. “Until now, FishBase is the only worldwide Information system of its kind. That is about to be changed - at least for the oceans”, she explains.