Ichthyologists set for big conference on fish

Press, 18 November 1989, Page 8

Ichthyologists set for big conference on fish

PA Wellington About 100 ichthyologists — fish researchers — will gather in Wellington this month for a big conference, said Dr Peter Castle, Reader in Zoology at Victoria University and chairman of the organising committee. Victoria University and the National Museum will host the International Conference on Indo-Paci-fic Fish, from November 27 to December 1. It is the third in a four-yearly series.

Scientists will discuss different groups of fish found in the Indian and Pacific oceans. Also to be discussed are fish of the Southern Ocean — the seas south of New Zealand and the southern continents — and the inter-relation-ships, evolution and geo-

graphy of the various groups. Fish, rather than fisheries, are the focus of the conference although the two fields of study are closely linked.

The Southern Ocean and much of the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans were relatively unexplored as far as fish species went, Dr Castle said.

New species were discovered regularly, many of them by commercial trawling as deep as a kilometre. In New Zealand the number of recognised species had doubled to 1000 in the last 10 years, he said. They were the subject of a book to be launched at the conference. “New Zealand Fish,” published by the National Museum in association with Gov-

eminent Print, lists and describes with illustrations all known New Zealand species at the time of writing. Scientists from the United States, Japan, Australia, Korea, Taiwan, other Indo-Pacific countries and Europe would attend the conference, Dr Castle said.

The keynote speaker is Dr Richard Winterbottom, curator in charge of the ichthyology and herpetology Department at the Royal Ontario Museum. He is also Associate Professor of Zoology at the University of Toronto. Other speakers include Emeritus Professor Jack Garrick, who retired from Victoria University three years ago and will present a paper on deep-sea “cat sharks.”