About FishWise Professional

FishWisePro is a comprehensive, fully relational fish database of more than 100,000 scientific species name combinations and just over 34,000 fish pictures. It has been specifically developed for Academics, Students, Marine Biologists, Authors, Ichthyologists and all other serious users interested in Fish Taxonomy.

Design Criteria:

• Ease of use for all levels of user.
• Consistent design approach to Forms and Functions.
• All Name Combinations to be Original Names or Linked to an Original Name.
• Any Name Combination must reveal the Original Name and the Current Name.
• Filter feature to quickly Find and Group Data.
• Structures to Enforce and Improve Data Integrity.
• Relational DataBase with Relational Integrity.

We trust you will find this site meets these goals.

FishWise, as a website, has been created to assist with and enhance the experiences of divers dedicated to photographic explorations of our seas and oceans. The site is intended to be user friendly and intuitive for anyone one who's interested in fish and their natural habitat.

Source Database

Last major database update: 14-Jul-2012.

FishWisePro is based on the valuable work done by William N. Eschmeyer and his colleagues at the California Academy of Sciences.

A summary paper, "Marine fish diversity: history of knowledge and discovery (Pisces)" by William N. Eschmeyer, Ronald Fricke, Jon D. Fong & Dennis A. Polack, was published in Zootaxa, no. 2525:19-50 (2 July 2010).

Related links and partner sites

A History of FishWise

Dennis Polack, the writer and creator of FishWise, holds a strong fascination and love for the sea. He first used a mask and fins (goggles and frog feet in those days) in the sea at the age of 14 and has been diving ever since. Today he is retired but continues to actively engage in his four main interests: scuba diving, underwater photography, fish watching and databases. He is exceedingly fortunate to have a wife, Sally, who passionately shares his interests and dives and takes underwater photographs all over the world with him. After each trip she becomes actively engaged in sorting, identifying and registering pictures into FishWise.

The couple's interest in fish identification was initially sparked by friend and co-diver, John Dench. Having relied on his extensive knowledge to help them in identifying species for many years, In 1990 John gave them a fish book with pictures and descriptions of about 110 common species for the East coast of South Africa, imploring them to learn the names. Although grateful for the gift, Dennis and Sally maintain that it was an act of desperation on his part to stop them pestering him all the time. None-the-less, on the long drive home from Sodwana to Johannesburg, they began to memorise the names and although Dennis had no idea at the time, this was the beginning of FishWise. When they had learnt the 110 names, Dennis and Sally purchased more books and learnt more names. At about 400 names they could no longer remember the scientific names without a list.

This list was created in dBase 2 and later upgraded to dBase 3. More names were added and when they got to the stage where they knew the names but could not remember what the fish looked like, it became obvious that they needed to link images to the names. To achieve this, Dennis moved on to another programming language called Clipper. Despite initial success with this programme, the 22 seconds needed to display each image was completely unacceptable. Finally when Microsoft Access was released everything became possible. Pictures could load quickly and a fully relational database could be built. At this point FishWise became a reality.

Technologies used

This site is hosted by Arvixe.com. It uses Microsoft ASPX.NET technologies, and is developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional. The database engine is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and the excellent data controls (and tech support) are provided by DevExpress.

Pages are generated using Miami, a program supplied by Black and White Inc, with programming by Donn Edwards.

Thumbnails are generated using Easy Thumbnails after the pictures have been edited and touched up using Adobe Photoshop.

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