The year 2020 marks the 30th anniversary of FishBase and the 15th anniversary of SeaLifeBase, two online global biodiversity information systems that, together, provide biological and ecological information on more than 110,000 marine species.
Tag: FishBase
Kicking off the FishBase and SeaLifeBase anniversary celebrations
The year 2020 marks the 30th anniversary of FishBase and 15th anniversary of SeaLifeBase, two online global biodiversity information systems that, together, provide biological and ecological information on more than 110,000 marine species.
To celebrate these milestones in the times of physical distancing, we are launching a year-long digital campaign that leads up to September 2020, when we celebrate these anniversaries, and to September 2021, when we hope to get together in person at a symposium to be held during the Annual FishBase Consortium Meeting.
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.
A new use for museum fish specimens
Preserved specimens. Image by Merryjack, Flickr.
The discoloured fish that rest in glass jars in museums across the world are normally used by specialists as references to study the traits that identify certain species. But a new study proposes an additional use for such ‘samples.’
Published in the Journal of Applied Ichthyology, the paper proposes using such specimens to estimate the length-weight relationships of fish that are hard to find alive in their natural environment.
Daniel Pauly talks oceans data at UWA
Photo by Alison Barrat.
This week, the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Daniel Pauly, is offering a public lecture titled “New ways to view complex oceans data.”