Washington Scientist Launches Effort To Digitize All Fish

SEATTLE (AP) — A University of Washington professor has launched an ambitious project to scan and digitize all of the more than 25,000 species in the world.

Last fall, Adam Summers installed a small computed tomography, or CT, scanner at UW's Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island in Washington state and began capturing three-dimensional X-ray images of fish.

His goal is to scan all fish, so there's one clearinghouse of CT scan data freely available to researchers anywhere.

So far, he and others have scanned images of more than 500 species, from poachers to sculpins, from museum collections around the globe. He hopes to add thousands more and has invited other scientists to use the CT scanner, or add their own scans.

[STORY BY: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS]