March 15, 2010 (Vol. 30, No. 6)
URL:
http://fishbase.org/home.htm
Rating:
Strong Points: Enormous amount of information, nice links
Weak Points: Sometimes pages were slow to load
Summary:
Now here’s a site where you can really go fishing for information! (I wish I could take credit for that pun, but it also happens to be used a few times on the website…) FishBase is a massive database for everything you ever wanted to know about our finned, fishy friends. To understand the scope of the database, here are the current statistics (as of November 2009): 31,400 species, 279,800 common names, 49,100 pictures, 43,700 references, 1,750 collaborators, and 33 million hits per month. (Are you impressed yet?) One can search the database by species (scientific name or common name), ecosystem, topics, family, or country. There are also other resources beyond the database on the website, including a fish forum, a long list of fish websites, and even a fish quiz.
