On the second episode of the FishBase and SeaLifeBase Anniversary Podcast, Daniel Pauly talks about some of the rewards and challenges of creating FishBase and turning it into a leading biodiversity information system.
Category: Notes on Current Events
FishBase and SeaLifeBase by the numbers
FishBase was born 30 years ago and SeaLifeBase 15 years ago.
The processes and efforts behind the creation of these two databases have been complex and enormous, involving dozens of staff members and thousands of collaborators.
Sea Around Us collaborator Rainer Froese wins Ocean Award in the Science category

Rainer Froese. Image from FishBase.
Long-time Sea Around Us collaborator, Dr Rainer Froese, has just received the Ocean Award in the Science category for his contributions to marine conservation and ocean health through the development of novel fish stock assessment methods particularly suited for data-poor contexts.
Jack Randall (1924 – 2020): a friend of FishBase

Jack Randall at an FAO/ICLARM/MSI/NORAD workshop held in early October 1995
in the Philippines, and devoted to the creation guide the fishery resources of the Central
Western Pacific (see Froese and Pauly 2000, p. 13). Photo by Rachel ‘Aque’ Atanacio.
Text by Daniel Pauly.
The public at large and scientists who are not taxonomists share a view of taxonomists as hard to connect with and sometimes remote; this may apply to some of them, but as with everything, there are exceptions. One of these exceptions was Jack Randall.
John Ernest Randall was born in 1924 in Los Angeles, California. He studied at UCLA and then went to the University of Hawai’i, which he left in 1955 with a Ph.D. After various jobs in Florida and Puerto Rico, he became a Senior Ichthyologist at the Bishop Museum in Hawai’i (see Wikipedia), the position he held when he began his association with FishBase.
Daniel Pauly amongst the world’s most cited scientists
The Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, is amongst the top 0.01% of the world’s scientists based on the impact of his publications.