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Issue no. 2, November 2018

Dear friends,

This newsletter is proof of the strength of the deep commitment of the Q-quatics team to bring the best available science within the reach of the many, and the power of solidarity to uphold that commitment during the occasional storm. We had an unexpected funding gap starting July. Many individuals made spontaneous donations in response to our plea. Even more importantly, the FishBase Consortium members stepped up research collaborations involving the Q-quatics team in an exemplary way. We are happy, therefore to report that the worst seems to be behind us. And the scientific production was largely kept up as you see reading on. We would like to wholeheartedly thank all those standing by our side to keep up service for the hundreds of thousands of people using FishBase, SeaLifeBase and other sources every month and enabling new insights as more and more diverse people bring their creative analyses to bear onto the science basics we provide.

The United Nations have declared the period 2021 to 2030 the "Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development". Let's prepare and strengthen collaborations to make it a great success!

Sincerely,
Cornelia Nauen
Q-quatics Board Chair

Representatives from the Project Management Unit (PMU) of SMARTSeas PH, DENR – Biodiversity Management Bureau’s Coastal and Marine Division, BMB’s Planning Division and FishBase attended the “Options for Complementation and Long-term Maintenance of the SMARTSeas Project Portal” workshop on 25 June 2018 held at Khush Hall, IRRI -Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines. The group met to discuss accessibility and utilization of the SMARTSeas PH portal and design workable linkages between the portal and other databases operating in BMB, primarily to draw options for complementation of these databases and create task-lines for the long-term maintenance of the project portal. [More]

FishBase Experts Train NFRDI NSAP Project Leaders on Fish ID

FishBase experts from the Philippines, Dr. Armi Torres and Mr. Rodolfo Reyes Jr., were invited as resource speakers at the “National Training on Freshwater Fish Identification and Reproductive Biology” organized by NFRDI Philippines / National Stock Assessment Program on 8-13 October 2018 which was held at the BFAR Region XIII headquarters in Butuan City, Philippines. [More]

GELLI GOES TO KIEL

DENG INTERVIEWED BY CNN

Ms. Vina Angelica "Gelli" Parducho, Q-quatics research staff and member of the SeaLifeBase Team, went to GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany for a month-long informal training course (26 May to 23 June, 2018) on CMSY analyses, life history and population dynamics with Dr. Rainer Froese. [More]

Q-quatics Board Member and Science Director Dr. Ma. Lourdes Palomares enlightened CNN Philippines Life thru an interview on what the Philippine government can do to further marine conservation advocacy in the country. Deng was one of the five Filipino marine experts interviewed by CNN. [More]

Use of FishBase Data & Maps Produces Major Scientific Breakthrough!

A recent study by Rabosky et al. analyzed the evolutionary relationships among >30,000 fish species and arrived at a startling conclusion that species formation was fastest in the icy polar seas, not in the warm tropics. One of the co-authors, Ms. Cristina "Nina" Garilao (GEOMAR) said they used over 12,000 distribution maps of marine fishes for this work, which are now in FishBase and AquaMaps. [More]

Scientific Consortium meets to plan the future of FishBase

The FishBase Consortium representatives and guests from 12 international scientific institutions met at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel from 3 to 7 September 2018 to discuss plans for future activities and projects of FishBase, the world’s largest information portal on marine and freshwater fishes. At the 2018 FishBase Symposium which transpired before the meeting, around 50 scientists and researchers shared the latest findings on fish and fishery biology, most of which used data from FishBase. [More]

New Publications

Since Q-quatics was established in February 2018, a total of 28 new publications [co]authored by Q-quatics research staff and partners from the FishBase Consortium have been released to include controversial studies i.e., "Global use of marine fishing gears from 1950 to 2014: Catches and landed values by gear type and sector” (Reconstructing global marine fishing gear use: Catches and landed values by gear type and sector) and "The economics of fishing the high seas" by Dr. Ma. Lourdes 'Deng' Palomares. [Complete List]

Deng Awarded by Frontiers

Big congratulations to the Science Director and Board Member of Q-quatics, Inc., the SeaLifeBase Project Coordinator, and Sea Around Us Project Manager Dr. Ma. Lourdes ‘Deng’ Palomares for receiving an award for her outstanding efforts as Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Marine Science, granted by the journal’s Community Support Fund. [More] [📷 Valentina Ruiz Leotaud]

This is Why We Celebrate Our Reefs

2018 marks the third International Year of the Reef. We celebrate it to increase awareness and inspire people to collaborate and take action in their own small ways. In tune with this, SeaLifeBase blogs about what a coral is, its features, special connection with symbiotic algae, the threat of global warming, and what we can do to help improve the condition of our precious reefs. [SLB Blog]

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