Greg Martin has been one of the most visible and hardest-working people behind ANGFA Victoria's public face for well over a decade — as its longtime newsletter editor, as its President since 2017, and as the club's most prolific field-trip organiser.

Greg started keeping fish around age 12, buying them from Marion at North Croydon Aquarium after riding his bike there from home in Croydon — he remembers her fondly as an elderly, kind woman with large aquariums of gentle fish like full-size Kissing Gouramis. He started with Swordtails and Kribensis. A few years later a friend showed him rainbowfish, most likely Melanotaenia splendida — his first exposure to Australian natives, well before he'd ever heard of ANGFA. In the early 1990s, now with a young family, he set up a high-tech planted aquarium inspired by The Optimum Aquarium, Kasper Horst and Horst E. Kipper's method using CO2, under-gravel heating, nutrient dosing, strong lighting and Dupla Aquaristik equipment, and kept fish throughout that decade, eventually converting his garage into an insulated fish room. Around 2000 a major change in his circumstances led him to move house, eventually settling in Eltham, where he still lives today. It was John Lenagan who introduced him to ANGFA in 2004, taking him along to his first two field trips — the Maribyrnong River at Flemington Racecourse for gobies, and Balcombe Creek in Mornington for Galaxias.

Greg's headshot, run alongside his own “Editor's Note” column — VicNews 118, Feb 2016, p.3

Greg took over editing VicNews in June 2013 and has shaped it, in one form or another, ever since. When the regional clubs briefly experimented with a single combined national newsletter, Greg produced that instead — twelve editions of ANGFA News between 2017 and 2021 — before VicNews was revived and he picked the editor's chair back up in 2022, a role he still holds today. Across both mastheads that's 58 editions of newsletter carrying his name as editor. Since 2016 he's also done the layout and design for Fishes of Sahul itself, having taken over from Ken Smales and introduced the A4 format the journal still uses, and he organises the journal's annual bound “yearbook” compilation and its hard-copy mailout each year.

As President since August 2017 — taking over from Kwai Chang-Kum, following a committee tenure stretching back to 2012 — Greg has also been ANGFA Victoria's public face at events across the state, from Melbourne Museum's Open Day to the Werribee River Association's Open Day to VHS Expos and the Mullum Mullum Festival, running native-fish displays to introduce the hobby to newcomers. He's also been a member of the Convention Committee since the lead-up to the 2022 Brisbane Convention, and was involved in organising the 2013 and 2019 Melbourne Conventions before that.

Greg (leftmost) with Glenn Briggs, Henry Albert, Ross Weber, Damian DiLorio and Rod Wubben on a field trip — VicNews 124, Feb 2022, p.6 (photo: John Lenagan)

Where Greg's contribution really stands out is in the sheer number of people he's personally taken fishkeeping outdoors. Across 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2023, he led the Aquatics survey team at the Bob Brown Foundation's Tarkine Wilderness Bioblitz in Tasmania, organising 4WD hire and borrowed fyke and dip nets from Inland Fisheries Tasmania, and presenting the team's finds to well over a hundred volunteers each year. He has also run ANGFA Victoria's trade table — buying, storage, transport and meeting setup — since 2016, continuing today at a reduced level.

Greg and Dave Shoesmith dipnetting through eel grass in a tidal pool — VicNews 107, Apr 2014, p.13 (photo: John Lenagan)

Greg on a Murray River sandbar, holding up a field tank of rainbowfish for the group — ANGFA News 64, Apr 2021, p.31 (photo: Greg Martin/John Lenagan, jointly credited)