MARINE SCIENCE POST

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31077, 4 June 1966, Page 22

MARINE SCIENCE POST

Dr. J. F. C. Morgans, senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Canterbury, has been appointed director of the Oceanographic Research Institute in Durban, South Africa.

Ex officio he will become head of its big “oceanarium” for public entertainment and instruction and a research professor of the university and a member of its senate. Born in Durban, Dr. Morgans has just returned from a brief trip for interview for the position. The South African Association for Marine Biological Research, an unusual non-profit making organisation, had inspired and supported the Durban establishment, Dr. Morgans said. The Durban

Aquarium was opened in 1959, attracted tremendous interest, and profits were ploughed back for extensions and establishment of the Oceanographic Research Institute. This, in turn, was heavily supported by the South African Government and Natal Province. Now the Durban City Council had granted additional land on the seafront and across the road from the business centre. There were nine research scientists at the institute in addition to oceanarium staff.

Shark attack was a prime project in some aspects of which Durban led the world. Dr. Morgans said this arose from the alarm caused by such attacks and the damage caused to Durban’s big holiday and tourist industry. The former director (Professor D. H. Davies, who was killed in a car accident in December)

had sent trouble teams to examine and photograph the victims and scenes of every shark attack - to identify the type of shark, circumstances, and any patterns suggesting conditions conducive to attack.

The Durban Oceanarium, featuring much beyond an aquarium, had big collections of fish on view through portals. Turtles, and man-eating sharks were fed by hand daily by skin divers. Dr. Morgans came to Canterbury in 1961 from the East African Marine Fisheries Research Organisation at Zanzibar. He has been in direct charge of Canterbury University’s Edward Percival Marine Laboratory at Kaikoura; worked in close conjunction with others in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin; made two pollution surveys of the Avon and Heathcote rivers for the Christ-

church Drainage Board: held many marine courses in adult education: and recently organised the symposium on

marine sciences at the conference of the Marine Sciences’ Association.

Dr. Morgans was commodore in 1964-65 of the Canterbury Finn Association and is a prominent yachtsman in this one-man class.