John Lenagan discovered ANGFA in the late 1990s through a Diamond Creek population of Southern Pygmy Perch, attending his first meeting in 1998 at the Victorian Field Naturalists Hall in Blackburn. In the nearly three decades since, he has become one of ANGFA's most consistent behind-the-scenes contributors: Treasurer of both ANGFA Victoria and ANGFA National simultaneously for 12 years, a member of the Fishes of Sahul publications committee for 9 years, and one of ANGFA's most prolific photographers, with several hundred photo, image and video credits spread across VicNews, ANGFA News and Fishes of Sahul.

John's own connection to fish goes back much further than ANGFA, and further than Australia. He was born in Trinidad, and is a descendant — a great-great-great-nephew, on his grandfather's side — of Robert John Lechmere Guppy, the naturalist the guppy is named after, who sent specimens to the Royal Museum London in 1861. He was first fascinated by fish at age 8, shown a fish room in Perth belonging to a friend's grandfather, and was given his own 12-gallon aquarium soon after. His early childhood was spent exploring the Swan River, Lake Munga and Perry Lakes in Western Australia, watching gobies and brackish-water fish and keeping local fish, snails and shrimp. He joined the WA Aquarium Society in 1973, breeding and displaying tropical fish and learning to grow aquatic plants, and while exploring the upper Swan River tributaries behind the Darling Scarp he caught and kept wild Western Galaxias, later adding Western Pygmy Perch from the Kalgan River near Albany — a native-fish interest that took root years before he'd ever heard of ANGFA.

John at work on a creek bank, photographing Long-finned Gobies in a small glass field tank — VicNews 121, Aug 2016, p.8 (photo: Greg Wallis)

His career took him from the oil rigs of Barrow Island, to studying Architecture at the University of Western Australia, to a stint in Sydney, and finally to Melbourne in 1992, where he settled in Diamond Creek and set up his first fish room. He was also a member of two Melbourne clubs, EDAS (and was their treasurer for 6 years) and the Aquarium Society of Victoria, where he learned Takashi Amano's planted-aquarium approach alongside Neil Armstrong and Eddie Tootell's Nature Aquarium method — laterite substrate, CO2, metal halide lighting, careful fertiliser dosing. He was active in the plant study group for 10 years, and won medals in both the "Ironman" Aquascaping and Cyril Callow planted-aquarium competitions.

John's Treasurer role is a genuinely rare arrangement: elected in October 2013, he held the Treasurer position for both ANGFA National and ANGFA Victoria simultaneously for 12 years. Over that tenure he helped grow ANGFA Inc's operating account by 400% and ANGFA Victoria's by 500%, modernised membership subscriptions online, transitioned the club's accounts from cheques to EFT and PayPal, managed the finances for six ANGFA National Conventions, and renegotiated ANGFA National and Victoria's insurance policy with the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, cutting the annual premium by 70%. Alongside the ledgers, he joined the Fishes of Sahul publications committee in 2008 — working alongside Tony Tucceri, Neil Armstrong, Ron Bowman and Ken Smales in its early planning meetings — and served on it for 9 years. For more than 8 of those years he also personally collated and posted every printed issue of the journal himself, well over 100 copies up to four times a year, a job he kept doing even after the journal went digital and the hard-copy yearbook became an annual mailout.

John's tailgate rig in detail: camera, reflector, and a Murray Spiny Crayfish in the field tank — VicNews 132, Dec 2023, p.9 (photo: Greg Martin)

Anyone who has been on a field trip with John will likely recognise the routine: a portable glass tank set up wherever the group happens to stop, a reflector angled just so, and John working through the catch of the day one fish at a time to get the shot right. A trip report from a 2013 outing to Cherry Lake captured the scene well, thanking him for “weaving his photographic magic” while a colleague gently coaxed each fish into position with a stick — a small vignette that says as much about John's patience and care as any formal citation could.

Same session, a wider view — VicNews 132, Dec 2023, p.9 (photo: Greg Martin)

Photographing a Southern Pygmy Perch on a ute tailgate — VicNews 126, 2022, p.5 (photo: Greg Martin)

John's contribution isn't confined to Victoria, either. He has promoted ANGFA Victoria at expos and field days alongside Greg Martin, Kwai Chang-Kum and others, and assisted Greg as Aquatic survey leader for the Bob Brown Foundation's Tarkine Wilderness Bioblitz in 2017 and 2018 — fyke-netting and dip-netting across many Tarkine locations, photographically documenting every find and uploading observations to iNaturalist each night of the trip.

Much of John's fieldwork over the years has had a conservation focus, and he's remained a hands-on participant in ANGFA Victoria's own conservation projects rather than just a photographer documenting them. One recent example is the Southern Purple-spotted Gudgeon ("Zombie Fish") recovery project, where he helped set box traps in the field and filmed the 2024 release of captive-bred fish back into the wild.