Diseases are a major problem in intensive aquaculture, in the aquarium trade, and in polluted bays, lagoons, or inland waters. Computers can help to diagnose fish diseases, similar to their use in fish identification (see the ‘LARVAE table’, this vol.).

The DISREF table was originally developed by Imke Achenbach and Rainer Froese (Achenbach 1990; Achenbach and Froese 1990). It contains 314 descriptions of diseases or stages of diseases extracted from more than 200 references. About 150 macroscopic symptoms have been identified that can be used as diagnostic criteria. It has been shown that the information collected so far can be used to diagnose Northern Hemisphere diseases of marine and aquaculture species (Achenbach and Froese 1990).

Recently Heino Möller gave us permission to use photos from his books and slide collections (Möller and Anders 1983, 1986, 1989), thus increasing the number of disease pictures from 3 to 267 (see under Pictures).

Two experts, Toshihiko Matsusato and Brian Jones, kindly looked at parts of the information collected so far and we incorporated their suggestions and corrections. However, we feel that the table is still in a prototype stage and do not recommend it for routine use. Rather, we would appreciate if an institution working on fish diseases would take over the responsibility for this and the following table¾ either completely or for certain groups of diseases only¾ and subject the tables to thorough testing and further development.

The DISEASES table contains reported occurrences of diseases. For each case it states the affected Species, Disease, Country and Locality, Year, Prevalence, Intensity, Mortality and additional information. It contains 218 records of 148 diseases reported for 38 species.

As mentioned for the DISREF table above, the table is still in a prototype stage and is not recommended for routine use. We plan to further develop this table in collaboration with FAO. For more information, please contact the FishBase Project.

To get to the DISREF table, you click on the Biology button in the SPECIES window, the Morphology and physiology button in the BIOLOGY window, the Diseases button in the following window and the More information button in the DISEASE window.

To get to the DISEASES table, you click on the Biology button in the SPECIES window and the Diseases button in the BIOLOGY window.

The DISEASES tables are not yet available on the Internet.

We thank Heino Möller and Kerstin Anders for making their collection of disease pictures available through FishBase.