It was with profound sadness and sense of loss that I learned of the recent passing of my good friend
Trevor.
I first got to know Trevor, initially by correspondence, during 1994 and it very quickly became
apparent that we shared a fascination and passion for Nothobranchius fishes – not just from the
hobbyist aspect of maintaining them in aquaria, but we also both had a keen interest in investigating
them in the field in Africa in order to learn more about how and where these wonderfully-adapted
little fishes lived in their natural habitats.
To that end, Trevor’s first Nothobranchius “collecting trip” was to Zambia in 1994 when he and
another friend discovered a new population of the beautiful species Nothobranchius kafuensis. It
was this discovery that started our correspondence and friendship. I knew at that point that, like
myself, he had already been bitten by the “Notho collecting bug” and that there would be further
field trips in his future.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, we began planning such a trip for 1995, specifically to the Caprivi Strip of
Namibia in an attempt to find the Nothobranchius inhabiting that area. That fish had originally been
found in 1973 but had not been collected since that time and relatively little was known about it.
Trevor organized the venture in his typically efficient way and, come April 1995, with the third
member of our group, we set off from Johannesburg to drive to the Caprivi. We eventually managed
to locate the original discovery site where, at the time, there was a lot of mud but very little water.
Frustratingly, we found only three male specimens of the Nothobranchius at that site.
Ever resourceful, Trevor then set about collecting some of the substrate mud, into which the fishes
would earlier have deposited eggs; this would be taken home in the hopes that after storage for a
few months, he could hatch out fry. One of my enduring memories is of Trevor knee-deep in sticky
black mud, heavily laced with cow dung, himself smeared and spattered from head to toe with this
muck, struggling to extract himself from it while carrying two heavy mud-filled bags. I remember
thinking at the time: “Now there is a true Nothobranchius enthusiast!”. The sequel to this amusing
episode is that about half an hour later we learned from a local inhabitant/spectator about another
site just across the road, filled with water but hidden from our view, where we then found in
abundance the fish we had been searching for!
Following the successful Caprivi venture, Trevor organized two further trips, one to Zambia in 1997
and another to Mozambique in 1999. I was fortunate to be able to participate in the former trip,
which resulted in important discoveries of new populations of Nothobranchius. The 1999 trip to
Mozambique that Trevor organized was of a truly pioneering nature in that it was the first post-civil
war trip to the southern part of that country for the purposes of Nothobranchius field work. Travel
conditions in that country at the time were still very difficult and hazardous but, again, significant
discoveries of Nothobranchius fishes were made leading to advances in our knowledge regarding the
range of distribution of certain species and their regional variation.
The importance of these field trips for which Trevor was the principal instigator and organizer
cannot be overstated – in many respects they were ground-breaking efforts that pointed the way for
later research. It is my view that Trevor’s significant contributions to these early ventures have never
been fully appreciated.
Trevor was a caring, generous, responsible and unassuming person and these qualities were
reflected in the way he lived and interacted with others. His agreeable personality and knowledge
about the fishes that he was so intensely interested in, made him the ideal fish collecting companion
and I feel privileged to have been able to share some of those experiences with him.
Trevor’s interests in, and contributions to, the killifish hobby in general go back a long time and
certainly precede my acquaintance with him. He was also a long-time active member of the British
Killifish Association and was involved in the management of that prestigious organization. I can also
attest from personal experience that he was extremely generous in distributing off-spring or eggs
from the fishes that he collected during his field trips, thereby giving pleasure to so many other
hobbyists.
His passion for these fishes notwithstanding, I know from conversations I have had with Trevor,
often while sitting at a campfire after a hard day of travelling and wading through muddy pools, that
he was a devoted family man and nothing, not even Nothobranchius fishes, was more important to
him than that.
