Mark McGrouther

Mark McGrouther
Collection Manager
Ichthyology Research Collection
Australian Museum

Mark has produced a website that I have come to rely on for confirming the identity of fish I photograph or video on the Gold Coast and other Australian locations.

I use the site as my first point of reference to obtain correct Scientific Names and also to standardise the Common Name usage. Most of us struggle to remember scientific names and will use the common name, but as you know common names change from location to location so I have standardised my common name usage to match Mark’s website listings making it easier to conduct searches on Australia’s best fish identification website – Australian Museum Online. There is also very useful information on each species listed.

Mark’s Story
Although his initial training was on crustaceans Mark was fortunate to land a Technical Officer position working on fishes at the Australian Museum in1981.  He has worked there ever since and is currently the Collection Manager of the Ichthyology Research Collection

http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/about/research/mcgrout1.htm.

His work entails a range of duties including the maintenance and improvement of the collection, supervising the sending of loans of fishes to researchers worldwide and of course answering a seemingly endless stream of email. 

Mark has published over 40 articles http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/about/research/mcgrout2.htm and participated in numerous conferences and workshops.  His time at the Australian Museum has seen him participating in over 30 fieldtrips http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/about/fieldwork/index.htm both local and far a field, including Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Great Barrier Reef, the North-west Shelf as well as the Norfolk Ridge and Lord Howe Rise. Collection management duties have involved trips to Spain and the USA as well as all the Australian capital cities.

For many years Mark managed the museum’s collection databases and continues to enjoy database development and all things ‘computery’.  To satisfy this passion he is constantly adding to the fish website http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/index.cfm, which now boasts over 880 fact sheets on Australian fish species. The burning drive behind Mark’s work at the Australian Museum is to make reliable information about the Australian fish fauna available to a wide audience.

All of my fish photographs and video clips are linked to Mark’s website, if they are in his listings, so that it is possible to quickly access useful information on each species.

I encourage all to visit his work on the Australian Museum website:

http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/index.cfm

Mark preserving an eel specimen at Mindoro Island, Philippines.

 
Mark (orange board shorts) with two colleagues collecting specimens in northern NSW

 
Mark in Sydney Harbour during the introduced pests study.

Mark conducting a fish survey near the Olympic site at Homebush, Sydney