I’m including this thread on the general forum as I think I would gather more information from here rather than just on the UK forum. I visited a sea life centre recently in the UK and found once I had returned home that I had many photographs of species not labelled at the collection, I know this as I made it a priority to take ALL labels or notices seen around the collection. I was wondering if you kind people could guide me in the right direction towards a web page that would allow me to identify the unnamed species and would give me an encyclopaedia of ALL know fish species. How many more of you find this totally irritating? We could also use this thread as a complete encyclopaedia for links to all species identification web pages
The encyclopaedia of all fish species is Fishbase Search FishBase which has several mirror sites, I sometimes use the French one Search FishBase. However it is not always easy to use if you don't know where to start. For native marine species a good starting point is the British Marine Life Study page British Marine Life Study Society which has lots of links for detective work, but it is a bit of a labyrinth. Alan
You have virtually no chance of getting identifications from FishBase unless you have the basic knowledge, i.e. you already know the exact genus, but only need some info to get exact species. Keep in mind that there are well above 30 thousand fish species and it can be very confusing. Unless you already know genus, I suggest you upload the photos to the To Be Identified Gallery: http://www.zoochat.com/755/ No guarantees that you'll get an answer, but usually you will. If it involves a lot of photos (too many to upload to the gallery), PM me and I'll have a look. Unfortunately, lack of species signs in aquariums is fairly common. Part of the explanation is that some types of exhibits, especially large ocean tanks, coral reef and Amazon, can be quite rich in species – sometimes 10s of different in a single exhibit and often with regular changes. One solution are touchscreen signs that take up limited space and are easy to update for the aquarium. I know some zoochatters dislike them, but personally I find this solution far superior to covering a whole wall with species signs that often end up being outdated after a short time anyway.
