My Friend Jack.

It is with great sadness that I share the passing of Jack.

There is a page where others will undoubtedly state that he was a great man.

And he certainly was - but he was so much more than that. On top of being the word's greatest Ichthyologist and Fish taxonomist, and phenomenal scientific mentor, he was also humble, self-deprecating, always generous and helpful to others, totally genuine, endowed with unbridled passion and curiosity, and funny as hell.

But above all.

He had a long, wonderful and exciting life filled with countless exhilarating and uplifting encounters, adventures and discoveries in far-away destinations. And from what I could discern, he really was a happy man, with a lovely family, and many lovely and loyal friends.

And ultimately, that is what really counts.

I will miss him greatly and always remember him fondly.

Goodbye Jack.

May you dive endless seas filled with beautiful undescribed Fishes.

Honoring the Fish Geeks!

Jack, with Helen, at the  Darwin Award ceremony.

Watch.

This is my pal Richard, he of Tourette's.

I've blogged about him before and was particularly happy to discover this excellent tribute. No he really ain't a mere naturalist but is instead one of today's preeminent fish taxonomists and marine conservationists - but other than that, very fitting and certainly long overdue!

And then there's his mentor Jack, equally a friend.

Yes it's somewhat old and I should have really posted it earlier - still, bravo Christie Wilcox for this wonderful profile honoring the greatest living Ichthyologist and one of the humblest, most accessible and funniest people around. Of interest, the mentioned idiopathic neuropathy is likely due to Jack's long-term exposure to rotenone and not a late upshot of his many decompression accidents like we all thought.

But I'm digressing as usual.

Required reading - enjoy!
 

The Goby

The end of the Bull Shark season is clearly approaching.

To witness, the animals are skittish and infuriatingly picky.
One day, they are ravenous and turn up in impressive numbers; the other, they stick to the sidelines and will only deign to approach if enticed with juicy pieces of Oilfish, a revolting deep-water species (probably this one) that is increasingly being viewed as unfit for human consumption. Much to the contrary of Mahi Mahi which the Bull Sharks however refuse to eat!

What better time for concentrating on our other crown jewels, the surprising and ever increasing abundance of Fishes inhabiting the Reserve!
Being an underwater photographer and now, a videographer, I've always been somewhat of a Fish Taxonomist, but ever since diving with Jack, this has evolved into more of a "serious" interest. In fact, it appears that something may have rubbed off, as I regularly manage to run across some unusual ichthyological trouvaille.

Case in point: this tiny Shrimpgoby, very likely belonging to the Genus Stonogobiops.
It popped up in some footage of one of our skittish Splendid Garden Eels, Gorgasia preclara and I've never been able to find it again. My gut tells me that it may just be a juvenile Yellownose Shrimpgoby, Stonogobiops xanthorhinica, pictured above. But having said this, I've once seen (and equally failed to collect) a very similar, although bigger Fish on Dinah's Reef in PNG and this may well turn out to be a new, hitherto undescribed species.
If we ever see it again! And manage to catch a specimen!

Well, judge for yourself.
Keep in mind that I was filming the Eel and never saw the Goby - so it is what it is. I've added some slow motion at the end where you can clearly see the unusual white filamentous dorsal spine.


The footage was captured with a Sony PDX10 in a Gates housing equipped with the fabulous super-wide port by Fathom Imaging. Yes, this is the very same lens I use when filming our big Sharks! Talk about unparalleled quality!

These are some of the last such images by yours truly, after which I'll be upgrading to a Sony EX1 - equally in a Gates housing and equally with a super-wide port!
Lemme tell you: I'm stoked!

Honoring Jack

Jack and Helen Randall in 1955 - the year I was born!

Randy is a good man.

He's very much at the forefront of Marine Conservation in Fiji and his FLMMA, the Fiji Locally Managed Marine Area Network is well on its way to ensuring that 30% of Fiji's reefs are being protected.
But that's another story for another day.

The story here is that I had the pleasure of discovering that Randy has published the following moving laudatio of my friend Prof. Dr. John E. Randall, nicknamed Jack, in Fiji's lifestyle magazine Mai Life. Please click on the pictures to read it.













In brief, Jack is the world's most eminent Fish Taxonomist, full stop.
And this by a long long stretch! He has described more Fishes, authored more papers , groomed more authoritative Fish Taxonomists, published more Fish ID reference books and very generally, contributed more to Ichthyology than anyone alive. You would never suspect it as nobody could be more genuinely friendly, witty and modest: but Jack is truly larger than life (and I know he will hate me for having said this).
In fact, he has scoured the Oceans so thoroughly that some of his his disciples have resorted to go and explore the twilight zone in order to have a chance of running across something new!

Well, Jack has obviously the advantage of having been around forever, right from the very beginning of SCUBA and at a time when the Ocean was still largely pristine, unpolluted and teeming with life. Read this!
I had been given my long-john underwear when I was discharged from the army, so I dipped it in a wash basin of latex rubber, hung it up to dry, and may have had the first wet suit.
The first swim fins in those early days of skin diving were shaped like frog feet, and the face masks were perfectly round with narrow hard rubber edges that one had to fit to one's face by careful cutting and sanding.
This was in 1948!

Jack has been with the Bishop Museum for over 40 years now and I sure hope that those guys will never forget the immense contribution he has made to their standing within the scientific community - and prima vista, they do.
Their website praises its Fish collection as follows: it
is dominated by the extensive collections of its most prominent ichthyologist, John E. ("Jack") Randall, who joined the Bishop Museum in 1965. Jack Randall has single-handedly established the Bishop Museum fish collection as arguably the best systematic research resource in the world for Indo-Pacific reef and shore fishes by his selective collecting for over 40 years and his prolific writings on fish systematics,

and Jack informs me that
the Museum’s fish collection compares favorably with other museums in the U.S. (except the USNM and the California Academy of Sciences, which has the combined collection of CAS and Stanford University). Bishop Museum has 2,875 lots of type specimens of fishes, of which 698 are primary types (holotypes, lectotypes, and neotypes).
The American Museum of Natural History in New York has 523 primary types of fishes; the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History has 226, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography 205.

Impressed? You better be!

Vinaka Randy, this was most timely and very kind!

John's Geek

Punion anyone?

Remember John the Renaissance Man?
When I blogged about him last year, I mentioned his very own first disciple Rob Whitton, "a young, smart, promising computer whiz".
As in "Computer Geek", a largely harmless and often endearing subspecies of Homo nerdicus, or Common Nerd.

But that was last year.
Before I found out that he hangs around with these guys!

Warning: absolutely shocking content!!!



You had been warned!
All I can say is that Tourette's is hardly conducive to ever attaining the required Gravitas of a "serious scientist doing serious science, seriously" - John (one of the above perpetrators) being the one notable exception.
So far, that is - as long as he doesn't start rebreather diving in his speedos like that other dude!
Rob has just left after two weeks of Ichthyological rummaging and now I know better: far from being harmless, the man is lethal! And I'm not only referring to his deadly dabbling with (as in "rebooting of") my wireless router and aircon!

Turns out that before professional Geekdom, Rob used to be an Officer (but I bet: not a Gentleman!) in the Army Rangers!
Correct me if I'm wrong - but the way I understand it, those are NOT the surgical guys, as in Special Forces and the like! These are the guys who Rain down Punion, as in indiscriminate and wide-spread Punishment and destruction!
And an anonymous rewiever (yes this post has been subjected to peer review!) informs me that "Rob is also a combat Frisbee player! Whatever that means, and I’m not sure, it would seem to combine antithetical geek and ranger qualities into a sort of Ninja Nerd, no?"
As I said: Lethal!!!

Case in point, the Punion he and John have wreaked among the Eviota poplulation of Shark Reef and of the "Best Muck Dive in the South Pacific", i.e. a desolate piece of rubbly (or was it "rubbishy"?) aquatic real estate in front of Lalati!
Yes you guessed it, Jack is revising the Genus and needs specimen! Dunno who Jack is? Read this : if there ever was Da Man, this would be him! And he's the nicest, most generous and funniest guy on top of that!

Back to the serious stuff.
10 days of digging around have resulted in a whopping 53 additional species that are shortly going to populate the ever-expanding Shark Reef Fish List. Yes, that would be approx. 430 species on a small patch reef in Fiji! And counting!
And this despite the fact that precious time was regularly wasted on filming our Shark feeding spectacle (Chondrichthyans?? Anathema!! You just wait til I tell Jack...!!), and despite the fact that all planned Rotenone stations were quickly disposed of by our ever-greedy Giant Trevally who absconded with the plastic bags!

The Geek of course failed miserably.
He would regularly come back empty-handed, preferring to indulge in the collection of pretty (as opposed to "useful") images rather than bagging his daily quota of specimens. This on top of his ignominious failure to reach the boat when dropped on the corner of the reef that prompted a heroic rescue mission by his sensei.

But to his credit, whenever faced with the risk of terminal excomunication, he would miraculously throw a Hail Mary and come up with some spectacular result.
Like when he managed to use a jeweler's loupe and one of my spaghetti containers (hence gifted to science) in order to photograph the above, and possibly undescribed (ever seen an esca like this?) tiny fella. Yes that is sand and that's a dime - click on the pics and be amazed!
Or by coming up with some whopping range extension or in my case, by showing me how to save flash files to disk.

Meaning that I shall -grudgingly- welcome him back next year.

Because Shark Reef is far from having been exhausted.

The Eastern side is largely unexplored and being more exposed to the current, it constitutes a different habitat featuring different corals and thus very possibly more of the species that are frequent in current-swept Beqa Lagoon but that we have so far failed to see in the Reserve.
Also, the deeper reaches have likely so far produced below their potential due to a combination of short bottom times and inquisitive macro Elasmobranchs. We shall address that by using rebreathers and an escort of fearless indigenous bodyguards.

And lastly, we shall try to finally collect the Holotypes of those likely new shrimp Gobies that we failed to bag last year, by devising a new, Trevally-proof technique - as in deploying cutting-edge implements like empty jars of Vlasic's Original kosher Pickles, at least as groundbreaking an approach to Taxonomic Research as the aforementioned spaghetti containers!

All-in-all, much to look forward to!