The Making of FishBase (and its uses, maintenance, etc.)

Daniel Pauly Sea Around Us University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Ocean Conservation Masterclass (Lecture 5 of 10) University of Western Australia Perth, May 24, 2017 [email protected] The true precursor to FishBase:

My card index box on fish biology and population dynamics, initiated in early 1977 Then in 1987…

Daniel Pauly and Rainer Froese met at the Institute for Marine Science in Kiel, Germany, and shared a wonderful misconception:

That fisheries in the developing world would improve if managers had access to data on fish, and training.

At the time, training was provided by FAO and bilateral agencies (such as IDRC), but information of fish was scattered and needed to be gathered, standardized and made widely available.

The FishBase idea was born. Which led to a project (Dec. 1988): We built on erroneous assumptions

• That the taxonomy of fishes was sorted out; • That experts would volunteer to help; • That technology was not a problem; • That therefore the task at hand could be achieved in 3-5 years with 2-3 encoding staff; • That 500 managers worldwide would be the users; • That one of the big international institutions (FAO, UNEP, IUCN, IOC, …) would eventually take over. Over 20 years later

We learnt since with regard to training and information dissemination, that there is no connection between knowledge about a species and status of its stocks.

Example: the Northern cod of Canada, probably one of the best (or most) studied stock in the world 500 100 Overfished Not overfished

cod 400 80

herring 300 60

200 40 References in FB (n)

plaice sprat (n) in FB records Growth 100 20

0 0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 Relative stock size (B / Bmsy )

Number of references and growth records in FishBase 2010 relative to the status of the worst stock, for 19 European species (data of 2007). Also, we learnt that fish taxonomy remains a problem

• Sorting out valid names and correct spellings was and remains a major headache; • The number of species keeps increasing (200- 500 new fish species per year); • Names keep changing (1% per year); • Knowledge about fishes increases exponentially. Also, most experts can’t be bothered. One of the few exceptions: Jack Randall, here checking photos in FishBase…

Also, UBC’s Don McPhail and Rick Taylor ! Moreover, the hardware changed

Daniel’s first Schlepptop IBM AT was best Rainer’s first Portable

IBM AT was top IBM AT was top

First scanner (handheld) First LAN (dead slow) First CD-Burner in the Philippines …as did operating systems

and database software …not to speak of Internet software As well, ENCODING is important and never-ending, as could have been attested by the FishBase Team in the 1990s… …and in the 2000s What do our ½ million visitors per month want?

Photos Common names Scientific names References Info by Country Eschmeyer Glossary Identification Fish collections Trophic ecology FishBase Book Population dynamics Reproduction Physiology Tools Ecology Fish Quiz Diseases Genetics

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 June – August 2009 Percent of visitors accessing this topic FishBase Users by Continent

Oceania Australia Africa

South America North America

Asia

Europe

Based on 2122 entries in the FishBase Guestbook , June 2004 100 USA 10 Brazil Australia Germany Greece Japan 1 South Korea China India Russia Luxembourg 0.1 Peru Saudi Arabia (July 2004) 0.01 Pakistan Kenya PNG Belarus 0.001 Cuba FishBase usage by country (%) Ghana

0.0001 0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 Internet usage by country (%) Citation frequency 1900-2005 (articles cited at least once) Out of about 38 million Citation class # of items % items, half have not >1000 5,063 0.03 been cited at all. 600-999 9,685 0.05 500-599 6,637 0.03 400-499 12,557 0.06 300-399 27,059 0.14 200-299 74,025 0.37 100-199 343,269 1.72 50-99 953,064 4.78 25-49 2,006,529 10.06 FishBase belongs to 15-24 2,226,603 11.17 0.03% of all most cited 10-14 2,106,995 10.57 items ever 5-9 3,891,542 19.52 2-4 4,931,952 24.74 1 3,343,789 16.77 Total cited 19,938,769 100.00 Non-cited 38,163,319 FishBase widened the scope of fisheries science

and provided the opportunity for global studies

Κnowledge Information Partners and Sponsors The FishBase Consortium

FishBase Book and CDs released annually from 1996 – 2000, followed by a final DVD in 2004 The success of FishBase is clearly illustrated by our website, which receives monthly:

• 40-50 million hits; • Over ½ million unique visitors. The hits come from: • All continents; • A wide variety of users: Individuals Universities Museums Research institutes NGOs FishBase went online in October 1998 FishBase in 2010

FishBase search page in 2010 Now let’s see if I can show this live…