Dr Helen K. Larson — known to the international goby community as the "Goby Queen" or "Gobywan Kenobi" — has been part of ANGFA's world for over three decades, first appearing in the club's publications in the late 1980s and still an invited convention speaker as recently as 2022. Her case rests on a different kind of long-term contribution than most: she is the taxonomic authority ANGFA members have turned to for identification for over 30 years, has personally described threatened Australian species conserved through ANGFA-linked programs, helped organise the 2007 Darwin national convention, has been an invited speaker at national conventions across at least three decades, and has 13 species and other taxa named in her honour.

Helen first recognised gobies while snorkelling in the Cocos (Keeling) Atoll lagoon at age 12, and, as her own convention biography puts it, "fell in love with them" — "a fish that will willingly perch on one's feet deserves special consideration." She has been actively publishing on fish taxonomy since 1975, a 45-plus-year career as of her most recent convention appearance. For most of that career she was Curator of Fishes at the Darwin institution known at different times as the Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences, the Northern Territory Museum, and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory — one institution, renamed and reorganised over the years. She retired from that role in late 2009 and moved to north Queensland, continuing her goby work from there in association with MAGNT and the Museum of Tropical Queensland, Townsville. By 2022 she held the titles Emeritus Curator of Fishes at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Research Associate at the Museum of Tropical Queensland, and Adjunct Associate Professor at James Cook University's School of Marine and Tropical Biology. Her title in ANGFA's own newsletters shifts over the decades too, from plain "Helen K. Larson" in the late 1980s, to "Mrs. Helen Larson" as late as 1997, to "Dr Helen Larson" from 1998 onward — a doctorate earned somewhere in between. Away from fish, she's an active birdwatcher and Vice-President ("cassowary warrior") of the Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation at Mission Beach, and a member of Birdlife Australia.

Field portrait, bucket hat and backpack, accompanying her official convention biography — 2015 ANGFA National Convention program (Port Macquarie), p.5

Helen has written for ANGFA's own newsletters at least twice: "New Names For Desert Gobies" [ANGFA Bulletin 24, April 1996] and "Endangered Native Fish in Captivity" [ANGFA Queensland Newsletter 15(2), March/April 1999]. She co-authored, with Keith Martin, "Freshwater Fishes of the Northern Territory" (1989/1990) — the standard NT fish reference for decades, still cited into the 2010s. Her own scientific output touches ANGFA's world repeatedly: she described five new Australian desert goby species in a 1995 review of the genus Chlamydogobius, including the Elizabeth Springs Goby and the Edgbaston Goby, both tied to the same Bush Heritage Australia/Red-finned Blue-eye conservation program connected to Greg Martin's own contributions. She has revised at least three further goby genera as ANGFA's newsletters reported them happening — Mugilogobius (the same genus containing M. wilsoni, the species later named for Dave Wilson), Redigobius, and Stigmatogobius — co-described the NT form of Melanotaenia maccullochi with Dave Wilson, and personally described Mugilogobius wilsoni itself. She co-chairs the Goby Group of the IUCN's Marine Fishes Red List Authority with Jim Van Tassell, sits on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, and has spent years co-authoring "Gobioid Fishes of the World" with Doug Hoese and Heiko Bleher, presenting it as a work in progress at both the 2015 and 2022 conventions.

Catching up with Gunther Schmida at the 2017 ANGFA Convention, Currumbin — ANGFA News 57, Jan 2018, p.7 (photo: David Roberts)

Her own voice carries a real warmth through the record. In an In-Stream feature on Stiphodon gobies she wrote: "They are great fun to watch with a face mask and snorkel but a pain to catch... I have collected them on Guam, Iriomotejima and Tahiti, all in decadently beautiful small forest streams. Or zap them with an electrofisher! Sitting here in an air-conditioned lab in front of a computer and thinking about swimming down a forest stream full of brightly coloured stream-gobies darting about in the sun – is not good; I want to run away now." The article's own author added, "Who said scientists were a dull boring lot???" Her 1996 Bulletin piece on desert gobies closes with the same dry humour, pointing confused readers to "Just ask Dave Wilson or the Silver Budgie," and inviting feedback on her species key with "if it doesn't work, let me know. ☺" A News member recalled having lunch with her near the end of a Darwin trip, then visiting her own backyard pond the following Saturday, finding her "on hands and knees beside a small densely planted pond in her backyard."

At Singapore Aquarium during an IUCN Red List workshop — 2022 ANGFA National Convention program (Brisbane), p.10

Helen has been an invited speaker or organiser at national conventions across at least three decades. In 1998 (Brisbane) she introduced members to goby classification and diversity as an invited speaker. In 2007 she helped organise the Darwin convention itself — thanked by name alongside Heidy and Alan Rubin, Robyn and Dave Wilson, and John Grylls "for organising this convention and keeping the ANGFA 'spirit' alive" — and was also its opening speaker, presenting "The fish fauna of the Northern Territory" and personally creating the convention's welcome audio-visual show. In 2011 she spoke on "Weird gudgeons," including the reveal of a new "Milyeringa gudgeon" and "Tetepare gudgeon." In 2015 (Port Macquarie) she presented the in-progress "Gobioid[e]s of the World" photo-guide with Hoese and Bleher, and in 2022 (Brisbane) she spoke on "A look at the fiendish goby genus Rhinogobius," an active taxonomic puzzle spanning 70-plus species. Beyond the 2007 organising credit, no ongoing committee role or office was found for her anywhere at state or national level — her case rests entirely on scientific contribution and personal engagement rather than office-holding, exactly as the members nominating her described going in.

Perhaps her single most remarkable individual distinction: her 2015 convention biography states plainly that she has "the honour of being the recipient of 13 eponyms to date (not all fish – also a skink, a parasitic copepod and a soft coral)." Only one has been independently identified in ANGFA's own publications so far — Stiphodon larsoni, a goby species named in her honour — but the figure of 13 from her own official biography makes it certain there is a great deal more still to find.