You can Search and Filter the Picture Database, of over 33 000 Pictures, by:

• Family
• Genus
• Species
• Genus Species
• Photographer
• Country
• Common Name
• A Combination of any of the above

(There is also an option to show the best pictures but very few of the pictures have been graded and we may need assistance from the community in grading the pictures). If you want to test the "isBest" option, try it on the Family "Serranidae" or any of its genera.

Initial View:

The initial view always displays all the pictures in the Picture Database.

When a filter is activated it always operates on the full list of pictures.

Filter:

The filter feature enables you to create a filter which, when applied to the displayed pictures, displays the pictures or group of pictures that you have chosen.

Auto Complete:

The "Auto Complete" feature can be very useful if you are not sure how to spell something you are looking for. To use this feature you must tick the "Auto Complete" box before making any selections and entering data into the input box. When this feature is switched on it checks in the data base to find records that match the data that you have entered and lists the matching records in a drop down box. During this procedure the data base is being continually accessed over the internet and for this reason, this feature can be very slow. Try it to see whether it proves useful for your requirements and remember that this option is always available if needed.

Start New Search:

To start a new search and clear all the filter options click on the "Clear Filter" button.

Temporarily remove some of the filter options created:

Untick any items in the "Filter Criteria List" that you want to disable. Click on the "Refresh Filter" Button and a new filter will be activated using only the ticked items in your list.

Permanently remove some of the filter options created:

Click on the "Clear Unchecked" button to remove all items from the "Filter Criteria List" that have been unticked.

Working with the Filter Criteria List:

After a filter is created, it is added to the "Filter Criteria List" together with a 'ticked' "check box". The "Filter Criteria List" is located below the "Filter" box on the right hand side, just below the "Add to Filter" box. The "check boxes" can be 'ticked' or 'unticked' (switched on or off) to add or remove that part of the filter. Once you have made a change, all you need to do is click on the "Refresh Filter Button to get a new set of results. By adjusting the filter criteria in this way the functionality of the filter is greatly increased resulting in an extremely powerful search capability. If you do not get the results you expect, always check the "Filter Criteria List" to ensure that the filter criteria are correct.
If you are not sure, click on the "Clear Filter" button to start again so that any possible conflicting filter items that could adversely affect the search are removed.
See examples below.

Examples:

1). Get all the Pictures of species that are in the genus Cephalopholis

Select "Genus" > Choose option "Starts With" > Enter Cephalopholis > Press Enter or click on the "Add to Filter" button. The results page will now display about 318 pictures of species in the genus Cephalopholis.
(this number may change because new pictures are being added on a regular basis). You can now browse through the 318 pictures. You can click on a picture to see a larger picture. A "Print" button is provided to allow you to send the larger picture to your printer. We have added "Mouse Over Tips" in as many places as possible to provide pertinent information to make your searching and viewing simpler and more enjoyable.

The "Filter Criteria List" now has one item in it:

• [GenusSpecies Starts With "Cephalopholis"] 
  This List displays the filter criteria you have created and allows you to check that it is what you wanted.

2). Get the "Best" Pictures of species that are in the genus Cephalopholis

Select "isBest" from the first Drop Down Box. When isBest is selected, the system automatically starts loading and selects option "Equals" and enters "Yes" into the third box. Press Enter or click on the "Apply Filter" button. When it has finished loading there are about 42 pictures displayed. These are the 42 best pictures of species in the genus Cephalopholis. Best pictures are not neccessarily the best from a technical or the prettiest point of view but in general are chosen on the following basis.

1) There can be several pictures of a species that are marked as isBest.
2) If there is only one picture then this is considered as isBest.
3) If the male is different from the female, pictures of both are marked as isBest.
4) If a juvenile or intermediate phase is different from the adult, the picture of the juvenile and or the intermediate phase is marked as isBest.
5) The picture of any other phase that is different will be marked as isBest.

The result is that you could end up with between one and five pictures of a species which are marked as isBest.

Note:

In creating the Filter used in Example 1 above, any of the 3 Options could have been used.

a). "Genus" - "Starts With". This is the default and therefore the quickest option to use as it doesn't need to "Load". With this option you could just type in "Cephalo" and after clicking on the "Add To Filter" button, you would get all the "Cephalopholis" pictures. You do however run the risk of getting additional pictures of species from other genera with names starting with "Cephalo" if there are any. For this reason, it is normally best to enter the full genus name so that you only get pictures of species belonging to the correct genus.

b). "Genus" - "Contains". This is not very useful in this case. You could enter "Pholis" and again you would get all the pictures of Cephalopholis together with any other pictures where the genus contains "pholis". This option can be extremely useful in certain conditions and can achieve results where the other 2 options will fail. (# see example below)

c). "Genus" - "Equals". With this option you have to accurately enter the full genus name. The functionality is exactly the same as entering the full name into "Genus" - "Starts With" as described in the above point "a" but you do have to wait while the option "Equals" is "Loaded".  You also lose out on the possibility of entering part of the name which you feel is unique and leaving out the end portion when you are not sure of the ending. In this example you may not be sure whether "Cephalopholis" ends with "is", "us", "os" or even "ous". Using the "Genus" - "Equals" option you could type in "cephalophol" and be confident that you will get all the pictures of species in the genus Cephalopholis and nothing else.

# Example using the option "Contains"

Let us assume that we want to view all the pictures of the white cap goby or was it white-cap goby or hang on, was it possibly white capped goby or maybe even white-capped goby. Do not despair this is easy with the "Contains" option. All of the above possibilities contain "white", "cap" and goby so let's do it by entering the following:

"Common Name" - "Contains" white >> "Add to Filter" - We get about 1485 pictures where one of the common names of each species with pictures in the display contains "white"

Now we add to the filter:
"Common Name" - "Contains" cap >> "Add to Filter" - We get about 51 pictures where one of the common names of each species with pictures in the display contains both "white" and "cap" We are certainly narrowing it down, let's add goby to the filter, but wait, is it "goby" or "gobie", it doesn't really matter, we will just add "gob" to the filter.

"Common Name" - "Contains" gob >> "Add to Filter" - We now get 10 pictures where one of the common names contains "white", "cap" and "gob". If you check the pictures you will see that they are all of the species "Lotilia graciliosa"

In this example we have used consecutive filters to narrow down our search until we got what we wanted.

# Example using different fields to build the Filter

Let us assume that we want to view all the pictures of a shark, all we know is that its species name is taurus or taura.  We first of all use the Common Name option to find all pictures of species that have the word "shark" in one or more of their common names.
Make sure the "Filter Criteria List" is cleared and enter:

"Common Name" - "Contains" - shark >> "Add to Filter" - After this filter is activated we get about 580 pictures where one of the common names of each of the species with pictures in the display contains "shark".
Now we need to add the species portion "Taurus" or "Taura" to the filter. Obviously we can leave out the ending and just use "Taur". The next obvious Filter would be "Species" - "Starts With" - taur. If we check the first Drop Down Box we see that there is no "Species" option. Oops - back to the drawing board. Genus Species is an one of the options, can we use this?. The Genus Species name obviously shouldn't start with "Taur" but it will certainly "Contain" "Taur". Lets enter the next part of the Filter:

"GenusSpecies" - "Contains" - taur >> "Add to Filter" - After this filter is activated we get 11 pictures where the Genus Species of each of the species with pictures in the display contains "taur". If you check, the pictures are all of the shark "Carcharias taurus". We were lucky on this particular example and only got one Species name. If we had got several different names all we need to do is check through them, decide which is the one you were looking for and add a third part to your filter. In this example if you had returned several different species, you would select "Carcharias taurus" and add it to the filter:

"GenusSpecies" - "Contains" - Carcharias taurus >> "Add to Filter" - After this filter is activated we will only get pictures where the Genus Species of each of the species with pictures in the display contains "Carcharias taurus".

In this example we have seen how we can work with different fields in consecutive filters to narrow down our search until we get the results wanted.

Hint:

If you do not get the results you are expecting, always check the "Filter Criteria List" to see what items
are ticked, make any necessary changes and then run the new filter by clicking on the "Refresh Filter" button.

Note:

The Filter inputs are not Case Sensitive. 

The Filters do not handle "diacritical marks". If you enter create a filter:

 "Author" - "Contains" Muller you will get only get "Muller" and not

More examples:

Because the functionality of the "Picture Search" is identical to the other searches/filters you can see more examples by opening the "Help on Filter Feature" on the other search pages. You can also go there directly by clicking here.

Subscribers to FishWise

Additional features will be available for subscribers and these will be announced in the near future.