Presentation to FishBase Consortium meeting

Two project members of the D4Science communities, Marc Taconet and Nicolas Bailly, attended the annual FishBase Consortium meeting, hosted by FAO from 7 to 9 September 2009. As part of this meeting, a traditional half-day symposium provided opportunities to FishBase members and the host organization to present the status, issues and prospects related to aquatic animals biology, ecology and biodiversity information.

Referring to fishery user needs regarding species information, Marc Taconet delivered a presentation positioning the FAO Aquatic species information in the broader Fisheries information system, and stressing the needs for an enhanced interoperability between systems developed by various communities of practice (fisheries, biodiversity, earth/ocean monitoring). In this regard, forward looking solutions are offered by the Semantic web (networked ontologies approaches such as promoted through the NeOn project) and the collaborative Virtual Research Environments for science (D4Science project). D4Science-II will offer a good framework for progressing in this direction.