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Welcome to the world of fishes!

FishBase is a global biodiversity information system on finfishes. From its initial goal to provide key facts on population dynamics for 200 major commercial species, FishBase has now grown to having a wide range of information on all species currently known in the world: taxonomy, biology, trophic ecology, life history, and uses, as well as historical data reaching back to 250 years.

At present, FishBase covers >35,000 fish species compiled from >59,200 references in partnership with 2,480 collaborators, >325,700 common names and >61,700 pictures. Our website gathers more than 700,000 visits monthly.

The breadth and depth of information in the database, combined with the analytical and graphical tools available in the web, cater to different needs of diverse groups of stakeholders (scientists, researchers, policy makers, fisheries managers, donors, conservationists, teachers and students). Its various applications aim for sustainable fisheries management, biodiversity conservation and environmental protection.

FishBase is currently hosted by the Quantitative Aquatics, Incorporated (Q-quatics), a non-stock, non-profit, non-governmental organization engaged in the development and management of global databases on aquatic organisms, including their distribution and ecology. It is scientifically guided by a Consortium of 12 international members.

Announcements

New Interface

2022-07-01

FishBase gets a facelift! The familiar FishBase interface is powerful but difficult to use on cellphones. We have developed a unified search interface and a species summary page which work well on small screens. Test the new interface and species summary page by clicking on the “New Interface” link on the top right of this webpage, and send us your comments.In the future, we intend to make the simplified search page the default search page, but don′t worry: the current search page will still be available as the advanced search page.

FishBase Guide

2022-02-01

The FishBase Guide, a new App for Android to show minimum and maximum length of fish and other info of use to producers, consumers and all fish lovers. Sponsored by Mundus maris asbl, Fair Fish International and Sea Around Us. Learn more

ETYFish

2022-01-31

The ETYFish project by C. Scharpf (etyfish.org) and FishBase have started a collaboration to progressively update the etymology of genera and species. So far, hagfishes, lampreys, cartilaginous fishes, and a few others have been updated. More to come in the next updates.


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