SeaLifebase: a database of all marine species of the world
Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Canada
The Side Event, attended by about 15 participants, was organized by Dr. Daniel Pauly and Dr. Maria Lourdes Palomares of the Sea Around Us Project, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia. A PowerPoint presentation was made by Dr. Pauly introducing SeaLifeBase followed by a demonstration of the online searchable database by Dr. Palomares. A lively general discussion concluded the session.
The SeaLifeBase Project is a joint activity of the Sea Around Us Project (Fisheries Centre, UBC) and the WorldFish Center (Philippine Office) initiated in October 2005. It aims to create a global online system (see www.sealifebase.org ) providing key information on the distribution, maximum sizes, depth ranges and ecology of all marine organisms of the world. It adapts the taxonomic hierarchy (up to phyla) used by Species 2000 (Catalogue of Life) and is closely patterned after the successful model of FishBase, the popular online database on fish (see www.fishbase.org ). SeaLifeBase incorporates fields designed for non-fish vertebrates and invertebrates. It currently contains key biological and distributional information for all non-fish vertebrates, all small and medium invertebrate phyla, all cephalopods, tusk shells, jellyfishes and hydroids (51% of the more than 260,000 marine species of the world) including growth parameters for over 200 species, maximum lengths for 4,500 species, depth ranges from 8,000 species, and details on the ecology for 20,600 species. This information was encoded from revisions, monographs, species catalogues, checklists and guides as well as from journal articles, reports, conference proceedings, theses and Internet sources, e.g., national and regional species databases. FishBase species summary data is displayed via SeaLifeBase’s online version and two other global species databases, i.e., AlgaeBase and Hexacorallians of the world, are deep-linked to SeaLifeBase to complement its output. Negotiations are under way to standardize data from the two latter databases to the same format as used in displaying FishBase and SeaLifeBase data. The project is funded by the Oak Foundation (Geneva, Switzerland) with a first phase (October 2005 to September 2007) establishing the online database and a second phase (October 2007 to September 2009) aiming to establish a SeaLifeBase Consortium tasked with ensuring the continued development of SeaLifeBase beyond 2009.
The general discussion following on the presentations touched upon the following themes:
• Availability and use of information sources, notably those in minor languages; • Geographical coverage and data quality; and • Linkages with the Census of Marine Life and the UN Ocean Atlas; • Sustainability of the database.
Dr. Pauly explained that information sources with useful geographic and biological information, including non-English texts, are used in SeaLifeBase, much like it is in FishBase. A network of collaborators is currently being established in order to obtain older publications that cannot be acquired via Internet and library resources. The SeaLifeBase team has members fluent in Spanish, French, German and some with working knowledge of Portuguese and Italian. They are thus able to extract the key data from published sources in these languages.
Discussions on the geographic coverage and data quality in SeaLifeBase clarified the fact that, like FishBase, SeaLifeBase is a global database that can be used by CBD country nodes to make country lists of marine species by taxonomic groups. Dr. Pauly also reiterated that aside from data quality checks performed by the team through automated routines, e.g., gap analyses and graphic outputs of distribution maps, the growing network of collaborators, experts and specialists (different biological fields) help in maintaining the integrity of data encoded into SeaLifeBase.
SeaLifeBase differs from the Census of Marine Life (CoML) in that it makes available key biological information on all (multicellular) marine species that have been so far described. This goal is thus complementary to those of the CoML, which emphasize previously undescribed species. Also, through the Ocean Bioinformatics System (OBIS), the CoML makes point (distribution) data available on maps, while SeaLifeBase , while making use of OBIS maps, documents species occurrence as country records, as required by the parties of the CBD.
Finally, Dr. Pauly reiterated that the second phase of the SeaLifeBase Project aims to create a Consortium that would assure the continuity of the project.
The discussions were concluded with the following recommendations:
• The database has a good potential to serve CBD national focal points in preparing their national reports; • It is thus suggested that a website linkage be provided on the CBD website; • Further discussion on the future development of the SeaLifeBase, in particular in relation to its contribution to the work of CBD, is recommended.