ANGFA Life Member — in memoriam
Barry Crockford
Barry Crockford, of Keilor and later Mt Macedon, Victoria, was one of ANGFA's earliest and most important links to the rainbowfishes of Papua New Guinea. A career that took him back and forth to New Guinea for much of his working life gave him the opportunity, and his own account puts it that way — unmatched among Australian hobbyists of his generation, to collect and bring home species that would otherwise never have reached Australian aquaria. In 1979 he discovered and collected the Spotted Rainbowfish, Glossolepis maculosus, in Oomsis Creek near Lae, sending a coloured illustration to the eminent ichthyologist Dr Gerald Allen that was identified as a species new to science; Allen returned with Barry to the same creek in September 1980 to collect further live specimens, which were later bred and distributed through the Australian hobby. Barry was responsible for establishing the Lake Wanam Rainbowfish, Glossolepis wanamensis in the Australian aquarium hobby, bringing live specimens back himself in 1980 and again the following year after the original 1978 shipment nearly perished in transit; those fish became the breeding stock of every G. wanamensis in Australia to this day. He was awarded ANGFA National Life Membership at the April 2015 ANGFA Victoria meeting.
As Rod Wubben told that meeting, "ANGFA's experiences with PNG rainbowfish would have been substantially less if not for Barry's contribution to ANGFA and the hobby." Barry had already been an ANGFA Victoria Life Member for some years by then, and had been active in the hobby and in New Guinea fish conservation since the association's earliest days — taking part in the 1982 rediscovery expedition for the Barred Galaxias, Galaxias fuscus, co-authoring a 1999 assessment of New Guinea rainbowfish stocks remaining in Australian aquaria with Rod Wubben, and returning to Lake Wanam in Papua New Guinea as late as 1999 to report on the introduced Tilapia that were decimating the lake's rainbowfish population.
This account is based upon his contributions found across ANGFA's publications.
Personal background
ANGFA Vic News profiled Barry at his Keilor home in 1999, in a "Floating About" feature by Damian Walsh and Amanda Kochevatkin, describing a house that was "more than a fish room visit, it is a vicarious journey to New Guinea and back" — complete with New Guinea artefacts, Barry's own paintings of New Guinea birds, and a butterfly collection alongside the fish. At his earlier Mt Macedon home he had kept 61 tanks of New Guinea fish he had personally brought back from the field, a collection lost entirely in the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires. It kept him out of the hobby for some years, until he converted part of his new home's back yard into a smaller fish room built around a simple philosophy: "you need fish for healthy plants and plants to keep fish happy."
Barry's feeding regime became something of a hobby legend in its own right — ground dried prawns, frozen daphnia, mosquito wrigglers, chopped lettuce and cooked broccoli, applying his own rule that he "won't feed anything to the fish that he wouldn't eat himself." He bred selectively rather than for volume, culling heavily to keep true wild-type fish going from limited gene pools brought back from New Guinea, and by the 1999 profile was still, in the writers' words, "the first in the water at any field trip, regardless of how freezing the water is."
Personal background drawn from ANGFA Vic News's 1999 "Floating About" profile and from Barry's own contributions across ANGFA's publications.
Contributions to ANGFA Publications
- 16 authored/co-authored articles in Fishes of Sahul between 1984 and 2001, almost entirely species accounts and field reports on New Guinea rainbowfishes
- Discoverer of Glossolepis maculosus, the Spotted Rainbowfish, in 1979, and the collector who established Glossolepis wanamensis, the Lake Wanam Rainbowfish in the Australian hobby by bringing back live specimens in 1980 and 1981
- Co-authored a stock-status assessment of New Guinea rainbowfish varieties remaining in Australian aquaria with Rod Wubben, ANGFA Vic News, 1999
- ANGFA Victoria Life Member before later being awarded ANGFA National Life Membership in April 2015
Featured contributions
Glossolepis wanamensis ↗
Fishes of Sahul, Vol. 3(2), 1985
Barry's own account of the Lake Wanam Rainbowfish, the species discovered by Dr Gerald Allen's 1978 expedition that Barry was instrumental in establishing in Australian aquaria — found only in a single lake in Papua New Guinea's Morobe Province.
Lake Wanam Revisited – a Habitat Under Threat
Fishes of Sahul, Vol. 13(3), 1999 — with P. Littlejohn and M. Vincent
A return expedition to the lake that gave its name to the species he had helped establish in Australian aquaria two decades earlier, reporting on the introduced Tilapia that were decimating its native rainbowfish population.
Rainbowfish – Appreciating and Maintaining Current Stocks
ANGFA Vic News 22, November 1999 — with Rod Wubben
A sober stocktake of what remained, by the late 1990s, of the wave of New Guinea rainbowfish varieties imported into Australia before the 1983 import ban — warning that several were down to "a handful of specimens spread far and wide between a few specialist breeders."
Complete list of contributions
Sorted by publication, then chronologically. Co-authored pieces are included.
Fishes of Sahul (16)
- Melanotaenia lacustris, Lake Kutubu RainbowVol. 1(4) — Crockford, B.
- The genus PopondettaVol. 2(2) — Crockford, B.
- Iratherina werneri – breeding procedureVol. 2(3) — Crockford, B.
- Glossolepis maculosusVol. 3(1) — Crockford, B.
- Glossolepis wanamensisVol. 3(2) — Crockford, B.
- Chilatherina campsiVol. 3(2) — Crockford, B.
- Glossolepis multisquamatusVol. 3(3) — Crockford, B.
- The family MelanotaeniidaeVol. 4(1) — Crockford, B.
- The genus GlossolepisVol. 4(2) — Crockford, B.
- Kiunga ballochiiVol. 11(2) — Crockford, B.
- Pseudomugil paskaiVol. 12(2) — Crockford, B.
- Melanotaenia goldeiVol. 12(3) — Crockford, B.
- Lake Wanam revisited – a habitat under threat. Lake Wanam surveyVol. 13(3) — Crockford, B.
- The Lake Wanam rainbowfish, Papua New Guinea field expeditionVol. 13(3) — Crockford, B., Littlejohn, P. and Vincent, M.
- Lake Wanam fasciata Chilatherina fasciata wanamensis, a subspecies in troubleVol. 15(3) — Crockford, B.
- Chilatherina axelrodiVol. 15(4) — Crockford, B.