It aims to provide key information on the taxonomy, distribution and ecology of all marine species in the world apart from finfish.
[1] SeaLifeBase is in partnership with the WorldFish Center in Malaysia and the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia.
As of March 2023[update], it included descriptions of 85,000 species, 59,400 common names, 15,500 pictures, and references to 39,300 works in the scientific literature.
The origins of SeaLifeBase go back to the 1970s, when the fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly found himself struggling to test a hypothesis on how the growing ability of fish was affected by the size of their gills.
[4] Given FishBase's success, there was naturally a demand for a database covering forms of aquatic life other than finfish.