, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

  Central figures behind FishBase are Daniel Pauly and the fish biologists around him at the UBC Fisheries Centre. FishBase itself is supervised by an international consortium which fields many of the world's most prominent fish scientists. The consortium includes the FAO itself, so in that sense it would be true to say that FishBase and the FAO are entangled. The central fisheries scientist at the FAO for many years was John Caddy. Daniel Pauly and John Caddy have, over the years had conflicts which could be regarded as representative of conflicts between FishBase and the FAO. Two high profile examples that spring to mind were a disagreement in 1999 over fishing down the food web, and a conflict in 2001 over FAO fishery returns. I have never seen FishBase and the FAO disagree on the common names of fish. That issue would arises only in relation to commercially significant fishes, since the FAO does not concern itself with fish that are not commercially significant. Presumably many wide ranging accommodations and rationalisations have been made within the FishBase consortium, and suppose this would be an example of one of them. We cannot know for sure, since the consortium doesn't seem to make its deliberations public. But the attempts some editors are making on this page to discredit FishBase are, well just plain ridiculous.   23:33