1. FishBase Lessons Learned Rainer Froese Germany rfroese@ifm-geomar.de

2. The Vision l Back in 1987, two scientists had an idea… è Create a database with key-information on 200 commercial fish species è Use it for research è Make it available to 500 fisheries managers in developing countries l 20 years later è www.fishbase.org contains information on 29,800 species which it contributes to the Catalogue of Life è Has over 1,000 citations in the scientific literature è Has about 2 million visitors per month in the Internet

3. If these hits were stocks…

4. It Looks Like This…

5. And This

6. Where is the Science?

7. Who is Using it?

8. Where?

9. What?

10. About 10,000 visitors per month

11. Where is the Science? 85 ISI Citations, 3 in Nature, 2 in Science (June 2002) IT June 2002

12. Google Scholar, April 2006: 1610 citations, including 5 in Nature and 7 in Science

13. personal pages enterprise companies other private institutions international commissions/consortia info portals, references/search archives, blogs Link-Analysis

14. (Science 1998)

15. FishBase can be utilized to produce simple, but effective posters: ….. customized for a fishery, a fishing area, fishing gear, fish market, etc. fish market, etc. A simple poster showing the actual lengths of fish species at first maturity can be a useful management tool. Posted in public places (e.g. public market), consumers can compare the size of the fish they buy with the pictures in the poster and know whether the fish has reached maturity. 19/32

16. Fish Rulers

17. Under The Hood 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 sufficientwww.ZoneEdit.com Lessons: Evolve or Go Extinct

18. General Principles 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 Lessons: Spirit

19. Lessons: 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, …

21. 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) Lessons: Operating Mode

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

23. Greetings from the FishBase Team

24. Thanks to our Partners and Sponsors