Global Marine Aquarium Database

Ed Green Ed.Green at unep-wcmc.org
Wed Jan 9 12:42:28 EST 2002


The UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) is pleased to
announce a new database on the trade in aquarium species, the Global Marine
Aquarium Database. This is available at http://www.unep-wcmc.org/marine/gmad

Users of the Global Marine Aquarium Database will have access to
approximately 50,000 records of trade in live aquarium species and may query
these geographically (e.g. the number of fish exported from the western
Pacific to North America) and taxonomically (e.g. the top ten most traded
families of invertebrates in global trade).

A more detailed description of the database and supporting project follows
below. Further data collection is ongoing and the Global Marine Aquarium
Database is continuously being updated, with the release of the next version
scheduled for April.

Comments, and notification of any errors especially in the names of
invertebrates, would of course be appreciated.

Best fishes,
Ed

Dr. Edmund Green
Head, Marine and Coastal Programme
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre
219 Huntingdon Road
Cambridge
CB3 0DL
United Kingdom

Tel: (44) 1223 277314
Fax: (44) 1223 277136

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Since April 2000 the UNEP-WCMC and the Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) have
been collaborating with members of trade associations to establish a Global
Marine Aquarium Database (GMAD) as a freely available source of information
on the global aquarium industry. Our common objective is to centralise,
standardise and provide fast and easy access to information on the aquarium
trade.

Description of GMAD

There is no monitoring or reporting framework for the global aquarium trade.
This means that the best source of quantitative data are the wholesale
import and export companies who link the supply and retail ends of the
business. As a matter of routine business practice companies keep records of
their sales, either as paper copies of their invoices or on company computer
databases. The exact nature of these records varies, but all record the
quantity of any individual species bought or sold, the date of each
transaction and the source or destination of the shipment. Company sales
records are therefore an excellent source of data on marine aquarium species
in trade, and the only source for species not recorded under any other
process (e.g. CITES).

UNEP-WCMC and MAC have established good working relationships with such
companies from all around the world. They have provided us with access to
their sales records which are the core data in GMAD. These data have been
through a careful and methodical period of data conversion (e.g. paper based
records have been computerised) and formatting (e.g. data from different
electronic systems have been placed into a single standardised format). Data
from 45 representative wholesale exporters and importers of marine aquarium
species have been harmonised by this process into a single publicly
available Global Marine Aquarium Database.

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