Early in his career, he worked at the Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM in Kiel) on computer-aided identification systems and the life strategies of fish larvae.

[3] Froese is best known for his work developing and maintaining FishBase, a large and widely accessed online information system on fish.

[5] He is also the coordinator of AquaMaps, which produces computer-generated global distribution maps for marine species,[6] and science adviser to SeaLifeBase, which is an extension of FishBase to aquatic organisms other than fish.

More recently, in a 2011 letter to Nature, he stated that the European Common Fisheries Policy "consistently gets to overrule scientific advice and drive fish stocks to the brink of collapse.

Without massive subsidies, European fisheries would be bankrupt: the cost of hunting the few remaining fish would exceed the income from selling the catch.