About the Catalog

In 2017, we thought about creating the Catalog of Fishes of Colombia as an aggregator and repository for all the information available for freshwater and marine fish in the Colombian territory.

In 2021, the Colombian Fish Catalog received a grant from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility-GBIF within the Biodiversity Information Development (IDB) program. This grant was intended to reuse all existing data on Colombian fish, in addition to strengthening the Catalog's relationship with institutionssuch as the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Authority-AUNAP, National Natural Parks, World Wildlife Foundation - WWF, the Information System for Biodiversity - SiB Colombia and the Institute of Marine and Coastal Research - Invemar. Additionally, the grant was used in the construction of this digital platform.

As of today, a total of 1,616 freshwater species and 2,181 marine species are recorded for Colombia (852 in the Pacific and 1,329 in the Caribbean)

The catalog includes information on taxonomy, synonymy, distribution, reproductive and trophic aspects, and relevant literature for each of the species. Through the catalog we are generating connections with existing pages via API that allow the interconnection and use of information by the users of the tool. In addition to the information on the species, the catalog includes direct links to images of the Colombian species available in the Colombian Visual Fish Catalog (https://cavfish.unibague.edu.co/) and in Invemar, with whom we created an agreement for the reuse of this data.

At the Catalog of Fishes of Colombia, we believe that scientific knowledge of fish species is crucial to guarantee their conservation and sustainable use. In this way we hope that the platform will be widely used by researchers and non-researchers and we are committed to keeping the information updated.