Keith Martin and his partner Sue Barclay, both retired professional Environmental Scientists, are among the most significant scientific contributors in ANGFA's recent history. Keith has been an ANGFA member continuously since 1983, joining while living in Darwin, and has served the ANGFA National Committee at different times both as Queensland's Membership Officer and as a general committee member. Since moving to Cairns, Keith and Sue have spent decades documenting the rainbowfishes of the Queensland Wet Tropics. Since Volume 30 of Fishes of Sahul (2016), Keith has been one of the journal's most prolific contributors by page count — twelve articles, 135 pages, not counting the co-authored "Fish in Focus" series — and with this year's Volume 39 written entirely by Keith and Sue, he becomes the single most prolific Fishes of Sahul author of the whole 2016–2026 decade; Sue herself ranks among the journal's leading contributors in the same period, on seven co-authored articles and 87 pages.

Aside from publications, Keith has delivered presentations at seven ANGFA Conventions, at ANGFA regional meetings and at other organisation meetings including the IRG in Germany.

Keith and Sue snorkelling together, Worth Creek — Fishes of Sahul 30(3), Fig. 3 (photo: Russell Constable)

Keith didn't grow up keeping fish — "I never kept goldfish as a kid, I kept reptiles," he's said — and came to the hobby almost by accident, walking out onto an exposed reef at low tide in Darwin in the 1970s and finding "a wonderful array of colourful fishes." A saltwater tank followed, and with it a community of fellow aquarists who taught him the ropes. His move into native freshwater fish came a few years later, through work rather than the hobby: helping with a fish survey at Berry Springs near Darwin in the late 1970s, where his first rainbowfish catch was a Black-banded Rainbowfish, Melanotaenia nigrans. That early survey work grew into a career — Research Officer with the NT Parks & Wildlife Service, then a consultant Environmental Scientist, work that took him to remote parts of Queensland, the Northern Territory, and eventually Indonesia for long-term fish monitoring projects.

Sue kept fish as a youngster, enjoyed fishing and birdwatching, and has a lifelong passion for wildlife and ecosystems. Her university degrees in zoology and ecology lead to a Master of Science thesis on the behaviour and ecology of cockatoos in NSW croplands. Employment in NSW included Uni tutoring, museum assistant, taxidermy, scientific illustrating, editing and research scientist (ornithology). From the 1980s in Darwin, she was an environmental scientist with a consulting company, and then the NT Govt Environment Protection Unit. Terrestrial and aquatic survey and monitoring work took her to remote parts of Northern Territory and Queensland. The aquatic surveys re-kindled an interest in fish whilst monitoring aquatic macroinvertebrates.

Keith mid-photograph, underwater camera in hand — ANGFA News 57, p.11

In 1995 Keith and Sue moved to Cairns. For Keith it was exciting to be near the Wet Tropics native fishes he'd read about in Fishes of Sahul and knew there was more to be discovered, and for Sue it was disturbing to see the lack of comprehensive knowledge and legal protections of aquatic systems in north Qld. So they started making day trips to Streets Creek, Wallaby Creek, Gap Creek, Davies Creek and others, building up a deep familiarity with the region's rainbowfishes. It's fieldwork they've kept up ever since: "my partner Sue and I still dedicate a lot of time exploring the Cairns region looking for rainbowfishes," he's said. "I try to photograph the fish in the wild if possible, or else set them up in aquaria to photograph fresh from the wild. I want my photos to look like what a wild or freshly caught fish might look like." Sue embraced the challenge of videoing fish in the wild.

Keith snorkelling and surveying a catfish nest site — ANGFA News 57, Jan 2018, p.11

That fieldwork produced the single strongest scientific credit of the whole nomination. Sue discovered an isolated, apparently out-of-range population of Cairnsichthys in Hutchinson Creek; she and Keith reported it in a 2013 conservation paper in the journal aqua, International Journal of Ichthyology, flagging it as a possible new species. Five years later, a formal taxonomic revision confirmed it genetically and morphologically and described it as the Daintree Rainbowfish, Cairnsichthys bitaeniatus (Hammer, Allen, Martin, Adams, Ebner, Raadik & Unmack, Zootaxa, 2018). The paper's acknowledgments single Sue out by name as the species' discoverer — "we are indebted to Susan Barclay for her initial discovery of the new species in Hutchinson Creek, and for her continued support through research, review and field surveys" — and both Keith and Sue collected the holotype and multiple paratypes across 2012 to 2015. It's a genuine start-to-finish story: a new species to science, driven substantially by one couple's own fieldwork. Keith went on to co-author a second species description the following year, of Melanotaenia sahulensis and Melanotaenia wilsoni — the latter named for fellow ANGFA Life Member Dave Wilson (Hammer, Allen, Martin, Adams & Unmack, Zootaxa, 2019).

Sue snorkelling, eye to eye with a Cairnsichthys bitaeniatus — the very species she discovered — Fishes of Sahul 39(1), Plate 10

Sue photographing rainbowfish, Hilda Creek — Fishes of Sahul 36(4), Fig. 5 (photo: Keith Martin)

Sue writing up field notes creekside at Morgan River, 4WD in the background — Fishes of Sahul 39(1), Plate 3

Keith's very first major publication predates all of this by decades. While still living in the Northern Territory, he co-authored Freshwater Fishes of the Northern Territory with noted NT ichthyologist Helen Larson — a 102-page handbook with 32 colour plates, published around 1990 and sold through ANGFA for well over a decade afterward, described in the ANGFA Bulletin at the time as "well presented with lots of great colour photographs... a must for the native fish enthusiast."

Keith's first major publication, co-authored with Helen Larson while he still lived in Darwin — ANGFA News 57, p.10

Keith's favourite fish is the Banded Rainbowfish, Melanotaenia trifasciata — "it is such a spectacular species in all its forms, and really symbolises the beauty of keeping Australian native aquarium fish," he's said. His favourite population comes from Eurum Creek near Weipa, where he camped for a week in the 1990s and swam with them daily; he still maintains a breeding colony descended from that population.

Melanotaenia trifasciata, Eurum Creek — Keith's stated favourite fish

Keith won ANGFA's national photographic competition — in 2011, for a shot of Iriatherina werneri — and has built a long friendship and field-work circle over two decades with Peter Unmack, Bruce Hansen, Gary Moores, John Lenagan, Michael Hammer and others across countless ANGFA field trips and conventions.

Keith with his 2011 ANGFA Convention photo-competition trophy and winning print of Iriatherina werneri — In-Stream 20(12), p.6

Keith snorkelling, Hills Creek — Fishes of Sahul 39(1), Plate 13

Keith (right, blue shirt) with Bruce Hansen and Ian Baddock at a field-trip coffee stop — ANGFA News 64, Apr 2021, p.7

On what keeps him coming back to it after more than four decades, Keith put it simply: "my fish interest is not so much in aquarium keeping, but in travelling to interesting locations, seeing the fish in their natural habitat, and trying to understand why that fish lives in that spot and not somewhere else. Fishes of Sahul has provided a fantastic outlet for me to publish the details of my observations, and I urge all members to do likewise. Everyone in ANGFA would have made some unique observations on their fish, and if they don't share that information, it is lost."

Sue's wish is that discoveries and publications lead to robust environmental legislations that protect our aquatic systems for the next generation to research and enjoy.