Some Lessons from FishBase

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Some LessonsfromFishBase
Rainer Froese Germany rfroese_at_ifm-geomar.de
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The Vision

• Back in 1987, two scientists had an idea
• Create a database with key-information on 200
  commercial fish species
• Use it for research
• Make it available to 500 fisheries managers in
  developing countries
• 19 years later
• www.fishbase.org contains information on 29,382
  species
• Has over 1,000 citations in the scientific
  literature
• Has about 2 million visitors per month in the
  Internet

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If these stocks were Stocks
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The Race to 100 Million
2008
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It Looks Like This
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And This
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Where is the Science?
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Who is Using it?
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Where?
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What?
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About 10,000 visitors per month
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Where is the Science?85 ISI Citations, 3 in
Nature, 2 in Science (June 2002)
IT
June 2002
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Google Scholar, April 2006 1610 citations,
including 5 in Nature and 7 in Science
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Link-Analysis
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What Else can FishBase Do? Invasive
Species
Aquarium Fishes which may Establish themselves in
Hawaii (6 of 111)
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More Applications Trends in Global Catches
(Froese and Pauly 2003)
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Fish Rulers
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Under The Hood
Under the Hood

• FishBase Structure

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Design Principles
Under the Hood

• Do not over-normalize
• Avoid (hide) codes
• Dedicated fields vs free-text fields
• Science and Data first approach
• Transparency (reference, entered, modified, date)
• Strategic decisions about data (comparative
  advantage, importance, future maintenance)

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Under The Hood
Evolve or Go Extinct

• From DataEase to MS Access to MySQL to ???
• From HTML to Cold Fusion to PHP to ???
• 6 mirrors around the world, not enough
• www.ZoneEdit.com for load-balancing, maybe not
  sufficient

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General Principles
Spirit

• Keep it simple
• Yes-Attitude
• Be opportunistic
• Give more credit than was expected
• Deal with errors
• Expose data
• Invite, accept and act on criticism
• Compare data
• Use your data

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Business Model

• Champion Rainer Froese
• Key supporters Daniel Pauly Cornelia Nauen
• Institutions
• ICLARM
• Since 2000 FishBase Consortium
• Donors
• European Commission
• Sloan, Germany
• Pew, USGS, NRDC, Taiwan, Australia,

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Operating Mode

• Strong leadership by one person
• Lose oversight by Consortium
• Full-time data entry by team of specialists
  full-time programmers
• Large network of additional contributors (mostly
  photos corrections)

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Future Plans
Future Plans

• Complete coverage and content
• Improve mapping
• Add more analytical tools
• Move to mobile devices
• Do FishBase for all aquatic species

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Greetings from the FishBase Team
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Thanks to our Partners and Sponsors