The Korean Freshwater Fishes

The Korean peninsula has about 961 freshwater fishes consisting of 41 orders and 203 families, of which 212 species are freshwater species (Kim and Park, 2002). Recently, for conservation of wild species in the world, there was such treaties as Convention and International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and Convention on Biological Diversiry (CBD). However, our aquatic environments have been exposed to various water pollutions as well as exploitations, and species of Korean freshwater fishes are gradually disappearing or reducing. Fortunately, 15 freshwater fishes are classified to protected or endangered fishes by Ministry of Environment, and they are protected by the law. However, because information on Korean freshwater fishes are limited to some scientists or professional literatures, students and amateurs is difficult to access. Therefore, it may be required a system that can be more useful for amateur and specialist, or students who wants to get a information on Korean freshwater fish. To satisfy the above purposes, we constructed database on 212 Korean freshwater fishes in Korean and English by internet (http://kffish.chonbuk.ac.kr) for providing much information on their description, distribution, ecology, respectively. This DB was divided into four groups: the endemic, endangered or protected, exotic and general species. Also, for more convenient search, it was primarily used many key words by a scientific name, the family name and the common name, even by photographs. It was given the searches by the collected areas, or streams and rivers. Also, this DB is focused on the biodiversity of the Korean freshwater fishes which may be faced with serious ecological problems caused by the development and water pollutions.