The SeaLifeBase Project, initiated in October 2005, is a joint activity of the Sea Around Us Project (Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia) and The FishBase Information and Research Group, Inc (FIN). Similar to the successful model on which it was built, i.e., FishBase, SeaLifeBase aims to create and maintain a global information system that provides key information on the scientific and common names, distribution, and ecology of non-fish marine organisms of the world. The proponents of this project are Drs. Daniel Pauly (Principal Investigator) and Maria Lourdes D. Palomares (Project Coordinator).
The encoding team, based in the Philippines, benefits from the more than 20 years experience of the FishBase Project. Data is encoded using publicly available references such as books, journal articles, and other online databases. Following the FishBase model, SeaLifeBase also collaborates with biologists, taxonomists, and other experts who either contribute and/or validate data.
SeaLifeBase went online in late 2007 and in April 2012 contains 105,400 valid species names, 24,100 common names for 22,128 species and associated data extracted from 12,500 references and contributed by 120 collaborators worldwide. It attracts 25,000 hits with 15,000 unique visits per month. Though this is only 0.08% of the more than 30 million hits with 0.5 million unique visits of FishBase, we hope that SeaLifeBase can become as valuable as FishBase has become to the users of the World Wide Web.
To know more about the project background, publications and milestones, please visit the SeaLifeBase homepage.
To search for information on a specific species, please go to search page at www.sealifebase.ca.
