Taiwan Fisheries Research Institute – Digital archives of coastal and offshore specimens

With funding support from National Science Council’s Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP), the Eastern Marine Biology Research Center of Taiwan Fisheries Research Institute (TFRI, http://www.tfrin.gov.tw) digitized its museum collection of eastern Taiwan fish specimens. Between March 2005 and July 2012, the Center accumulated data on 3,300 specimens, covering 167 families, 472 genera and 853 species. Among them, the families with the most records are Istiophoridae, Scombridae, Carangidae, Labridae and Lutjanidae. All the data are shown on TFRI’s website “Fisheries Information (http://www.tfrin.gov.tw/lp.asp?ctNode=840&CtUnit=144&BaseDSD=77&mp=3). Furthermore, the data have been incorporated into Academia Sinica’s “The Fish Database of Taiwan, http://fishdb.sinica.edu.tw” and the global fish database “FishBase, http://www.fishbase.org” so that the international community can better understand the fish diversity in eastern Taiwan and increase specimen inquiries and exchanges.