The leading centre for the study of fishes in Africa.

Mission Statement:

A National Facility of dedicated scientists, environmental educationalists and skilled support staff, committed to :

• the development and care of the national fish collection
• to the search for and dissemination of ichthyological knowledge
• to the conservation of fishes
• to the training of young African scientists for the benefit and upliftment of present and future generations.

Introduction:

The JLB Smith Institute of ichthyology is an internationally recognised centre for the study of fishes. Prof JLB Smith, famous for naming and describing the living coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, established a Department of Ichthyology at Rhodes University, in 1946. On his death in 1968, his wife, Margaret Smith, established the Institute which grew rapidly to become, in 1980, an independent, Declared Cultural Institution under the Department of Education and later in 1994 the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST). The JLB Smith Institute became a National Facility within the NRF on 1 January 1999 after the Government Gazette publication of notices 103 and 104 on 29 January 1999. The Institute maintains strong ties with Rhodes University as an Associated Institute,and in particular operates in close liason with the Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science (DIFS).

History of the Smiths and JLBSI

The JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology owes its existence to Prof James Leonard Brierley Smith and his wife, Prof Margaret Smith. Born on 26 September 1897 in Graaff-Reinet, Smith obtained a BA from the University of the Cape of Good Hope in Chemistry in 1916 and a MSc degree (with distinction) in Chemistry in 1918. He was awarded the Ebden Scholarship for overseas study and in 1919 enrolled at Cambridge University as a scholar of Selwyn College where he carried out research work on mustard gases. In 1922 Smith received the degree of PhD from the University of Cambridge. On his return to South Africa in 1923 he was appointed Senior Lecturer and later Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at Rhodes University College in Grahamstown. Smith was also appointed a Trustee of the Albany Museum between 1930 to 1955 (Pote 1997).

Prof Margaret Mary Smith nee Macdonald was born on 26 September 1916 in Indwe. She was educated at the Indwe (Eastern Cape) High School. In 1936 Margaret Macdonald received the BSc in Physics and Chemistry with distinction at Rhodes University College as well as a University Teachers Licentiate in Music (singing) from UNISA. She married JLB Smith on 14 April 1938 in Florida, Transvaal (now Gauteng Province). She had studied and worked under Smith in the Department of Chemistry and after her marriage became involved in his hobby of ichthyology. She accompanied him on fishing trips and collecting expeditions and eventually became an ichthyologist in her own right and a fish artist of renown. In 1981 she was appointed a full professor of Rhodes University. In 1986 she received the State President’s award of The Order for Meritorious Service Class 1: Gold, at Tuynhuis, Cape Town, ‘for exceptional merit by rendering exceptionally meritorious service in the general public interest’.

JLB Smith was a keen angler and developed a great interest in ichthyology. He became involved in the scientific study of fishes and came to serve all the museums of the Eastern Province in classifying their fishes. In 1931 Smith published his first ichthyological paper entitled New and little known fishes from the south and east coasts of Africa. In the years 1933 – 1945 he received an amount of £100 per annum from the Research Grant Board in Johannesburg towards his research on fishes. In 1946 the functions of the National Research Board and Council were taken over by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) which, with Rhodes University, established and supported the Department of Ichthyology.

Smith was thus fortuitously placed to identify and describe the living coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, saved for science by the East London Museum curator, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, in 1938. It was hailed as the zoological discovery of the century and equated to finding a living dinosaur. Smith’s scientific description of the coelacanth won him worldwide acclaim in 1939.

In 1946 Smith was appointed Research Professor of ichthyology at Rhodes University and the newly established Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) provided research funding. Smith’s abiding passion was to hunt for the home of the coelacanth. He had deduced that the first coelacanth discovered off the coast of East London was a stray and that its home was further to the north. The Smiths undertook a number of fish collecting expeditions along the east coast of Africa and collected a large amount of valuable material, some new to science and much new to southern Africa. In 1952 the news of the discovery of the second coelacanth in the Comores again sparked worldwide interest. He produced a number of significant scientific and popular publications until his death (by his own hand) in 1968.

In the same year, Rhodes University established the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology in memory of JLB Smith and to honour his lifetime achievements in ichthyology. His widow, Prof Margaret Smith, who had worked with her husband for 30 years, was appointed the first Director, with a staff of 5. Margaret Smith embarked on a recruitment drive to attract ichthyologists and in order to train up African Ichthyologists. In 1977 the large three-storey building which was designed and constructed in Somerset Street to house the Institute was officially opened (Pote 1997).

The Institute rapidly expanded and by the late 1970s had earned sufficient international stature for its work in systematic research to warrant sustained government funding. In 1980 the Institute was proclaimed a Declared Cultural Institution, a research facility, and funded by the Department of National Education. It was later administered by the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) in 1994. Rhodes University established a new Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science (DIFS) in 1981 to continue the work of training up African ichthyologists.

Prof Margaret Smith retired as Director on 30 April 1982, leaving behind her a vigorous and growing Institute which contained the largest collection of southern African marine fishes in the world (Pote 1997). Originally appointed as Senior Lecturer and Acting Head of DIFS, Prof Mike Bruton was appointed as her successor. A brilliant zoologist, he took all four of his degrees from Rhodes University with distinction. He believed that expanding was the only way forward. His capacity for innovation and ability to get new concepts successfully under way was truly astonishing (Jackson 1997). Margaret Smith had been concerned that the Institute might die for lack of funds as had the ichthyology school at Stanford. However, Mike Bruton not only ensured the Institute’s survival, but transformed and enlarged it in a manner undreamed of by either of the founding Smiths. In keeping with the Smith’s ideas and traditions of involving the lay public, he launched the ‘Society of Friends of the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology’ with its own quarterly newsletter entitled ‘Ichthos’. Bruton was also an excellent fundraiser and an outstanding entrepreneur, using every opportunity to promote the Institute. Prof Bruton was awarded the British Association Medal for 1986 by the South African Association for the Advancement of Science for ‘outstanding individual achievements in research by a South African scientist under the age of 40 years’. He resigned in December 1994 to take up the post of Director of Scientific and Educational Services at the Two Oceans Aquarium on the Waterfront in Cape Town.

By the end of 1984 a meticulously indexed library card system estimated to have 170 000 entries had been built up over a period of 18 years. The FISHLIT computerised bibliographic database of fish references was initiated to modernise the catalogue system in the joint Institute/DIFS library. Since 1985, the library has developed FISHLIT provides a comprehensive information service to students, fishery scientists, industrialists, ichthyologists and environmental educationists. In 1995 FISHLIT was sold to the National Information Services Corporation (NISC). To date, the database with over 100 000 entries is distributed on CD Rom by NISC South Africa.

Prof Paul Skelton was appointed in April 1995 to replace Prof Mike Bruton as Director of the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology. An NRF rated scientist, he became the first postgraduate student of the JLB Smith Institute and obtained his PhD in Ichthyology from Rhodes University in 1980. As Curator of Freshwater fishes at the JLB Smith Institute from 1984, Prof Skelton published a number of scientific and popular publications including in 1993 he published A Complete Guide to the Freshwater Fishes of Southern Africa, in both English and Afrikaans. This book is the most comprehensive colour-illustrated account ever published on the southern African freshwater fishes.

The Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) undertook a national review of all government-funded science, engineering and technology institutions after 1994. As an internationally recognised and established research centre housing the National Fish Collection, it was decided to deproclaim the Institute as a Declared Cultural Institution and move it to the stable of the National Research Foundation as a new National Facility. By Government Gazette notices 103 and 104 published on 29 January 1999, the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology became the fourth National Facility of the National Research Foundation effective from 1 January 1999.

Today the Institute remains an Associated Institute of Rhodes University and together with DIFS forms the biggest concentration of ichthyologists in Africa. The Institute and DIFS collaborate on research and education and share facilities such as the JLB Smith Library.

Scientists at the Institute are involved in research on fish in marine, estuarine and freshwater environments, ranging from the cold southern ocean to tropical Africa and the western Indian Ocean Islands.

Research in the Institute was initially directed at marine fish taxonomy but has diversified in recent years to include freshwater fish taxonomy, ecology, ethology, conservation, karyology, genetics, palaeontology, morphology and molecular biology. Education is regarded as a key component at the Institute and scientists also supervise postgraduate students of ichthyology. Many research programmes involve training and capacity building at a technical and professional level both locally and beyond South Africa’s borders. Courses run by the Institute include environmental education, taxonomy and systematics, conservation and management procedures. Stimulating education programmes aimed at scholars and members of the public are also available.

Today in this new millenium, the Institute continues to grow and expand its international stature as it transforms from a cultural institution to the fourth world class National Facility of the NRF.

For further information please consult the publication hereunder:

Skelton, PH & Lutjeharms, JRE. 1997. The JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology – 50 Years. JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology, Grahamstown, in collaboration with the Royal Society of South Africa, Cape Town.

The JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology (JLBSI) has an integral role to play in terms of communication, in other words, to disseminate the knowledge gained and generated by the research arm of the Institute. The Institute, together with the Department if Ichthyology and Fisheries Science (DIFS) at Rhodes University, constitute the largest concentration of ichthyologists on the African continent. Institute staff are directly involved with the supervising and training of postgraduate students. In addition, many research programmes involve training and capacity building at a technical and professional level.

Environmental personnel from various organisations in Zambia, Namibia, Swaziland, Mocambique, Malawi, Lesotho and Botswana have attended courses at the Institute or on-site, on environmental education, taxonomy and systematics, conservation and management procedures. Those courses held at the Institute are followed up by on-site training in the various African countries.

The Institute also has a stimulating education programme directed at scholars and members of the public who are interested in fishes. The aim of this programme is to encourage and develop an awareness of and respect for the environment, especially the aquatic environment.

People may visit the Institute on an informal basis, to view the exhibitions and especially to see the coelacanth. More formal visits involve group bookings during the year, or for ‘Focus (or theme) Weeks’. Such visitors may book for slide shows, illustrated talks, lectures, videos, workshops and tours of the Institute and Fish Collection as well as the Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science’s Fish Farm.

School groups are important visitors to the JLBSI, especially pre-primary and primary school groups. Continued collaboration and sharing of the very large groups with the Albany Museum has not only boosted overall visitor numbers, but it means pooling of resources and personnel.

The Education Section also has outreach programmes. One of these is based in a township primary school which has offered two empty classrooms for use by the Institute’s education staff. Various activities for primary school children are held at this venue. This has encouraged the local schools, which were unable to afford the travel expenses to get to the Institute, to participate in the education programme.

The other arm of the outreach programme centres on a bus which has been loaned to the Institute by the Methodist Education Initiative in Johannesburg. The ‘fish bus’ is to be painted with colourful cartoon-like characters (designed by Kholiswa Seti of NV Cewu Primary School in Grahamstown). It is being set up as a mobile museum with live and dead fish specimens and other fishy paraphernalia, portable video and slide shows and activities around the themes of fish and water. Initially the bus is visiting schools in the Albany District, especially those schools which would not otherwise have the opportunity to visit the Institute.

Developing resource material, in the form of pamphlets, worksheets, posters etc is also an essential function and a form of outreach. The junior supplement of the ICHTHOS newsletter, Talefin, covers a variety of themes from water conservation to deep sea creatures, but also includes activities such as model building, games and puzzles.

Contact the Education Scientist: Ms Vanessa Twentyman-Jones or the Education Officer: Mr Khanyile Jezi for further information, or if you have any ideas you would like to share.

Fax: (046) 622 2403