Welcome to the world of fishes!
FishBase is a global biodiversity information system on finfishes. Its initial goal to provide key facts on population dynamics for 200 major commercial species 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 >36,700 fish species compiled from >68,500 references in partnership with >2,570 collaborators: >333,200 common names and >66,300 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 13 international members (see below).
SUPPORT FISHBASE - DONATEWith the help of >2,000 collaborators we update the database daily (internally), and bimonthly on the website. FishBase provides the database and web interface for free for 25 years thanks to a full-time dedicated team. However, we lack recurrent funding to maintain the information system up to date both in content and technological innovation. We gratefully acknowledge financial contribution to continue the service of this open resource.
Additional Statistics
| 36,761 | Species | in 5,276 genera, 629 families, 84 orders, 10 classes |
| 103,875 | Synonyms | with 95,951 synonyms and 7,924 misapplied names |
| 333,268 | Common names | for 30,302 species in 260 "countries" in 361 languages |
| 197,453 | Reports in countries | for 36,479 species in 303 "countries" |
| 166,116 | Reports in ecosystems | for 34,603 species in 1,328 "ecosystems" |
| 64,641 | Reports in FAO areas | for 36,748 species in 26 FAO areas |
| 22,791 | Species with morphology | of which 19,350 have a short textual description |
| 29,809 | Morphometric ratio records | for 13,400 species |
| 1,687 | Identification keys | for 8,226 species |
| 34,583 | References used | and 34,004 not used yet |
| ~3.3 million | Records | in total in ~200 tables (~60 main) |
Fish Forum
Are you looking for a particular piece of information? Ask colleagues/experts through the Fish Forum
Be a Collaborator!
Interested in becoming our collaborator? Find out how to be a FishBase collaborator.
We're Fishing for Fish Photos
We are looking for fish photos. Learn how to become a collaborator by contributing pictures to FishBase See complete list of missing pictures.
We are looking for reported maximum length in literature. Please help us by providing references, preferably in PDF format.Technical reports and documents are appreciated as well. See complete list of species for which we are missing maximum length. Or download TXT file.
