Rainer Froese, born 25 August 1950, is a senior scientist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences

Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences

The Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences is a research institute in Kiel, Germany. It was formed in 2004 by merging the Institute for Marine Science with the Research Center for Marine Geosciences and is co-funded by both federal and provincial governments...

 (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel

Kiel

Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...

 and a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation. He obtained an MSc in Biology in 1985 at the University of Kiel

University of Kiel

The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...

 and a PhD in Biology in 1990 from the University of Hamburg

University of Hamburg

The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...

. Early in his career, he worked at IFM-GEOMAR on computer-aided identification systems and the life strategies of fish larvae. His current research interests include fish information systems, marine biodiversity, the biogeographical

Biogeography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...

 mapping of species, and the population dynamics of fisheries

Population dynamics of fisheries

A fishery is an area with an associated fish or aquatic population which is harvested for its commercial or recreational value. Fisheries can be wild or farmed. Population dynamics describes the ways in which a given population grows and shrinks over time, as controlled by birth, death, and...

 and large marine ecosystem

Large marine ecosystem

Large marine ecosystems are regions of the world's oceans, encompassing coastal areas from river basins and estuaries to the seaward boundaries of continental shelves and the outer margins of the major ocean current systems...

s.

Froese is best known for his work developing and maintaining FishBase

FishBase

FishBase is a comprehensive database of information about fish species . It is the largest and most extensively accessed online database on adult finfish on the web...

, a large and widely accessed online information system on fish. From 1990 until 2000, Froese lead the development of FishBase

FishBase

FishBase is a comprehensive database of information about fish species . It is the largest and most extensively accessed online database on adult finfish on the web...

 at ICLARM in Manila. Since 2000, he has coordinated the large international consortium that now oversees Fishbase. Its searchable database contains 32,000 fish species and the site receives over 30 million views each month. He is also the coordinator of AquaMaps

AquaMaps

AquaMaps is a collaborative project with the aim of producing computer-generated predicted global distribution maps for marine species on a 0.5 x 0.5 degree grid of the oceans based on data available through online species databases such as FishBase and SeaLifeBase and species occurrence records...

, which produces computer-generated global distribution maps for marine species, and science adviser to SeaLifeBase

SeaLifeBase

SeaLifeBase is a global online database of information about marine life. It aims to provide key information on the taxonomy, distribution and ecology of all marine species in the world apart from finfish. SeaLifeBase is in partnership with the WorldFish Center in Malaysia and the Fisheries Centre...

, which is an extension of FishBase to aquatic organisms other than fish.

Froese has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific publications. In 1998, along with Daniel Pauly

Daniel Pauly

Daniel Pauly is a French-born marine biologist, well-known for his work in studying human impacts on global fisheries. He is a professor and the project leader of the Sea Around Us Project at the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia. He also served as Director of the Fisheries...

 and others, Froese authored an influential paper called Fishing down marine food webs. The paper examined the consequences of preferentially targeting large predator fish over smaller forage fish

Forage fish

Forage fish, also called prey fish or bait fish, are small fish which are preyed on by larger predators for food. Predators include other larger fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Typical ocean forage fish feed near the base of the food chain on plankton, often by filter feeding...

. As a result, the fishing industry

Fishing industry

The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products....

 has been "fishing down the food web", and the mean trophic level in the oceans has progressively decreased. More recently, in a 2011 letter to Nature, he stated that the European Common Fisheries Policy

Common Fisheries Policy

The Common Fisheries Policy is the fisheries policy of the European Union . It sets quotas for which member states are allowed to catch what amounts of each type of fish, as well as encouraging the fishing industry by various market interventions...

 "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."

Some publications

• Froese R, Stern-Pirlot A, Winker H and Gascuel D (2008) "Size matters: How single-species management can contribute to ecosystem-based fisheries management" Fisheries Research, 92(2–3): 231–241.
• Froese R (2006) "Cube law, condition factor and weight-length relationships: history, meta-analysis and recommendations" Journal of Applied Ichthyology, 22(4): 241–253.
• Froese R, Piatkowski U, Garthe S and Pauly D (2005) "Trophic signatures of marine organisms in the Mediterranean as compared with other ecosystems". Belgian Journal of Zoology 134: 31–36.
• Froese R (2004) "Keep it simple: three indicators to deal with overfishing" Fish and Fisheries, 5(1): 86–91.
• Froese R and Sampang A (2004) "Taxonomy and biology of seamount fishes" Fisheries Centre, Research Reports, 12(5): 25–31.
• Froese R, Lloris D and Opitz S (2004) "The need to make scientific data publicly available – concerns and possible solutions" Pages 268–271. In: MLD Palomares, B Samb, T Diouf, JM Vakily and D Pauly (eds) Fish Biodiversity: Local studies as basis for global inferences. ACP-EU Fisheries Research Report 14, 283 p.
• Froese R, Binohlan C (2003) "Simple methods to obtain preliminary growth estimates for fishes" Applied Ichthyology, 19: 376–379.
• Froese R, Bisby FA and Wilson KL (eds) (2003) Species 2000 & ITIS catalogue of life 2003: indexing the world's known species CD-ROM.
• Froese R and Kesner-Reyes K (2002) "Impact of fishing on the abundance of marine species" ICES CM, (12).
• Froese R and Binohlan C (2000) "Empirical relationships to estimate asymptotic length, length at first maturity and length at maximum yield per recruit in fishes, with a simple method to evaluate length frequency data" Journal of Fish Biology, 56: 758–773.
• Froese R and Palomares M (2000) "Growth, natural mortality, length-weight relationship, maximum length and length-at-first-maturity of the coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae" Environ. Biol. Fish. 58: 45–52
• Pauly D
  Daniel Pauly
  Daniel Pauly is a French-born marine biologist, well-known for his work in studying human impacts on global fisheries. He is a professor and the project leader of the Sea Around Us Project at the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia. He also served as Director of the Fisheries...
  
  , Christensen V
  Villy Christensen
  Villy Christensen is an ecosystem modeller with a background in fisheries science. He is known for his work as a project leader and core developer of Ecopath, an ecosystem modelling software system widely used in fisheries management. Ecopath was initially an initiative of the NOAA, but since...
  
  , Froese R and Palomares M (2000) "Fishing Down Aquatic Food Webs" American Scientist, 88(1): 46–51.
• Froese R and Pauly D (eds) (2000) FishBase: 2000: concepts, design and data sources, ICLARM (344 pp). 4 CD-ROMs
• Froese R (1999) "The good, the bad, and the ugly: A critical look at species and their institutions from a user's perspective" Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 9: 375–378.
• Froese R and Torres A (1999) "Fishes under threat: An analysis of the fishes in the 1996 IUCN Red List" Towards policies for conservation and sustainable use of aquatic genetic resources, ICLARM Conf. Proc., 59: 277f.
• Froese R, Bailly N, Coronado GU, Pruvost P, Reyes R and Hureau JC (1999) "A new procedure to clean up fish collection databases" pp. 697–7. Proceedings of the 5th Indo-Pacific Fisheries Conference, Noumea, New Caledonia, B Seret and JY Sire, Society of French Ichthyologists, Paris.
• Froese R (1996) "A data-rich approach to assess biodiversity" In: Biodiversity in Asia: challenges and opportunities for the scientific community, JA McNeely and S Somchevita (eds). Office of Environmental Policy and Planning, Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, Bankok, pp. 127–136.

• Full list of publications

External links

• Interview with: Dr. Rainer Froese, marine biologist Youtube video, 13 September 2010.
• EU Fisheries Reforms Aim for Sustainability Der Speigel, 12 July 2011.
• Towards healthy stocks and healthy profits in European fisheries Presentation at Hearing: "How much fish can be safely caught?", 3 May 2011, Brussels.
• Trends in Global Fisheries Likely Causes & Possible Solutions Presentation at the WTO Forum in Geneva, 17 September 2010.
• AquaMaps Presentation at EDIT Symposium in Kiel, 18 January 2011.
• Rainier Froese on FishBase Retrieved 18 July 2011.
• FishBase: Brief History and Consortium 5 May 2006.