Australia – Fremalte, Western Australia, 31 May-5 June 2009
The conference attracted 500 plus professionals, scientists, students and lecturers. The Organising Committee had constructed an interesting and engaging program including numerous symposia on a range of topics. Main themes of the conference included Biogeography & Phylogeography, Biodiversity & Community Ecology, Population Biology & Ecology and Conservation, Sustainability & Management and Aquapress Publishers and Heiko Bleher were also present.
Australia – Fremalte, Western Australia, 31 May-5 June 2009
At the 8th Indo-Pacific fish Conference there were at least 4 very happy guys and fish enthusiasts together (besides over 500 more…): From left: Ralf Britz, Sven O. Kullander, Heiko Bleher and Joseph Nelson
Ms. Marie Taylor, Elder Nyoogar Community Aboriginal living here for nearly 50.000 years was one of the official opening speaker (also in her own language) and the Honourable Norman Moose, BA DipED JP MLC
Gerry (G. R. Allen) gave a plenary session on the Biogeography of the Cenderawasih Bay New Guinea…
… and Gerry showed the astonishing numbers of species recorded at the Vogelkop Peninsular with 31 new species found recently in the area
The lunch breaks were excellent and hear Bill (William Eschmeyer), the man that has one a amazing work, keeping all species catalogued at the fantastic reference (the only one reliable) for the California Academy of Science:
There were several very interesting plenary sessions, like Geoff Jones was “Connecting the dots: larval dispersal patterns in coral reef fishes“ and showed that “Nemo comes home“ – that is many of the newly born fishes find their way back to were they were born…
And Gerry introduced Bill as he received the unique Bleeker Award – he very well deserved it
Bill gave also a presentation on the development of species description since Linneaus, over 50.000 nominal species have been described, of which less the half are valid species… And also showed the increase in taxonomists since the 1950s…
… he also showed the numbers of species per family, which the Gobiidae is by far the largest…
… and Bill also estimated where still most new species are to be found and what is needed…
… and he presented the development of species descriptions since 1950 – most have been described in 2008 511 Taxa more the ever in a single year!…
… and his conclusions
Sven O. Kullander gave an excellent talk on: Some amazing Crenicichla species from the Uruguay River…
There was a very interesting talk on Paedocypris and the question “How many miniature peat swamp cyprinids fish species are there?“ And the fast habitat destruction of peat swamp areas…
Dough Hoese from the Australia Museum, world expert on Gobiids, gave a very good talk on the difficult and widespread genus Glossogobius…
… and Helen Larson – the Gobiid woman of the world, a presentation on the genus Gnatholepis
The man of fishes, Joseph Nelson, presented a talk on “Common and Scientific names of fishes from the United States, Canada and Mexico“ and for all common fish names to be Capitalized
The 8th Indo-Pacific Fish Conference took place at the beautiful Colonia Esplanade Building in Fremalte, right at the waterfront…
… near the Old Port…
… and sometimes the sessions ere going open up a little specially on the evening Connie Allen (Gerry’s wife), some of the finest woman I ever meet, invited the crew of ichthyologist and scientists to a Thai dinner…
Thank you Connie, thank you Gerry, Mark and all you guys at the 8th Indo-Pacific Fish Conference. See you latest in 4 years in Japan…
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