I was born in England and in 1966 at the ripe old age of five migrated to Western Australia where my Father had obtained work as an Anglican priest.

By 1968 our family was introduced to camping in the Southwest in the Geographe Bay region. It was the late Alan Miller who then introduced me to the underwater world of snorkelling. (Much later I became a qualified SCUBA diver)

I was so amazed by the beauty of the area and the extremely diverse fish life that I soon wanted to investigate and study every species I encountered.

Unfortunately I was disappointed when I looked in books to try and find out what fish I had seen. All the books on Australian fish seemed to refer to Eastern Australian species, which were generally different.

For some unknown reason I needed to know what species I was looking at. I started collecting fish and getting them identified at the museum. In the mid 70s I started photographing the fish in an attempt to create some sort of a photographic reference collection. At times people would question my sanity, but somehow it didn’t bother me.

As it turned out, the Western Australian Museum later produced some excellent field guides for local fish species. Dr Barry Hutchins, with whom I had exchanged information for a number of years, documented the Southwest fish species.

I was now satisfied that the majority of fish species in W.A. were well documented. But my passion for observing and identifying fish and collecting data about their habits and distribution continued.

Fortunately, my love of the water and the outdoors led me to obtaining work as a Laboratory Technician in Environmental Science at Murdoch University. I have been able to mix work with pleasure being involved with research projects such as, “Transplanting of seagrass in Cockburn Sound” (near Fremantle), fish surveys in the Swan River conducted by Murdoch’s Estuarine Biology Group, the “Centre for Research into the Introduction of Marine Pests”, and aquatic research undertaken by the “Marine and Freshwater Research Laboratory” at Murdoch.

To date I have collected approximately 400 species of fish in W.A., most of which have come from temperate coastal and estuarine waters. Other species have been from the North of Western Australia and in freshwater. Methods of collection have been by line, net, spear, and hand.

I am indebted to Barry Hutchins and the staff at the fish department of the Western Australian Museum who helped me with fish identification over the years. I also owe much gratitude to my parents, who never doubted my sanity and always encouraged me to follow my dreams.

Web page: http://www.environment.murdoch.edu.au/