How many species are there in the North Sea?

Since the establishment of the Flanders Marine Data and Information Centre (VMDC) we have been working on a central species register, ‘Aphia’, to support all other biological applications of the data centre. Taxonomic information including synonymy and higher classification is stored in a single relational database. At the moment, Aphia holds around 20,000 taxa for a geographical range roughly corresponding to the North Sea, including adjacent areas such as estuaries and the English Channel. The information is primarily retrieved from authoritative publications, but has also come from experts... Mehr ...