CAAB - Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota CAAB database content as at 3-Jul-2025 16:35
This is new version of the original CAAB application which is also deployed on the RV Investigator - Any issues, improvements etc. please contact IDC using the Contact form
Features include - the FISHMAP tool showing the expected distribution of fish, distribution map from CSIRO catch records, standardised names of commercial fish and plants from the AS 5300 and AS 5301 standards, selected images particulary of invertebrates, download your search list of taxa as csv, JSON output of any CAAB taxon record, links to the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and other sites.
The CAAB application and database is described in the IDC metadata catalogue Marlin.
CAAB citation
Rees, A.J.J., Yearsley, G.K., Gowlett-Holmes, K. and Pogonoski, J. Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota (on-line version).CSIRO National Collections and Marine Infrstructure (formerly CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research), World Wide Web electronic publication, 1999 onwards. Available at: https://www.marine.csiro.au/data/caab/.
Search form - search is case in-sensitive
- Fishmap - a tool to find expert distributions of fish - by family, location, depth range etc. (replaces the ALA Fishmap https://fish.ala.org.au)
- Get expert fish distribution as a shapefile - for additional formats, search the CSIRO NCMI Geoserver for the layer called 'caab:CAAB_FISHMAP'
Collection Images
- CSIRO Marine Invertebrate Image Collection (MIIC) - browse images from 22 voyages
- Fishmap Images - browse images from the Fishmap application
- CATAMI Images - browse images from the Collaborative and Automated Tools for Analysis of Marine Imagery - see http://catami.org/
View CAAB via Taxonomic tree
- Taxonomic tree - drilldown from kingdom to family and then list all taxa within that family.
- CATAMI classification tree - see http://catami.org/ for details including the PLoS One journal article
Web services, reports and extracts
- List of new or updated CAAB records in the last 30 days
- Return up to 1000 CAAB records as JSON using this search tool or view details to construct your own web service query.
- CAAB dump - an excel file of all current records. The download will take about ~1-2 minutes..
Standard Fish Names in Australia
- Standard Fish Names in Australia - see Australian Fish Names Standard AS 5300-2019 and Australian Aquatic Plant Standards AS 5301-2020
Example taxa reports
- Clathria (Clathria) macroisochela taxa report with images from the CSIRO Marine Invertebrate Image Collection (MIIC)
- Leafscale Gulper Shark taxa report (image/map)
- Lampanyctus lepidolychnus (Mermaid Lanternfish) report with expert distribution map from
the Australian National Fish Expert Distributions
and CSIRO catch records.
- Macroalgae: Large canopy-forming: Brown report with multiple images (CATAMI)