Science and history meet in the Kowie
Ichthyologist gives interesting talk to U3A members
Science reflects eras in history through the names it gives to new discoveries. Ichthyologist Paul Skelton was explaining how the Sandelia Bainsii fish (popularly known as the Rocky) is named after the great war warrior, Xhosa King Sandile Mgolombane and geologist Andrew Geddes Bain.
Members of Port Alfred’s University of the 3rd Age (U3A) and guests recently enjoyed Skelton’s informative talk, ‘Fish Tales on the Kowie’. This while they celebrated the club’s15th birthday with cake and tea.
The talk highlighted the scientific exploration and naming of freshwater fishes. Skelton worked as a taxonomist for many years, describing new species and correcting the names when there were errors made.
“The British occupation of the Cape in 1806 heralded a new era of scientific exploration in southern Africa,” Skelton said.
One of the first and better known explorers who visited the Kowie during his expedition of 1811-1812 was William John Burchell. He not only collected plants but many other organisms and made sketches of fishes that became the source of the first described freshwater fishes from southern Africa.
Interestingly, Skelton mentioned how the Keiskamma River was used as the meeting point for trading between the British administration and the AmaXhosa tribe. The ichthyologist also pointed out that the Burchell original map can be found at the Clivia Wonders Nursery located just out of town on the river.
The story of the ‘Rocky’, an anabantid fish described in 1861 as Sandeliabainsii from the Kowie by a French Consul to the Cape in the 1850s – Count F de Castelnau anchored Skelton’s presentation.
Skelton said he encountered the classic frontier fish for the first time in his professional career when he was deployed to investigate the big fish kill when the NicoMalan pass bridge was being built in 1972.
The specimens of the Rocky collected by Castelnau are in the Natural History Museum in Paris, where the name-bearing (type) specimens of other species from southern Africa, including the earliest known specimens of freshwater fishes of a
sister-species to the Rocky (the Cape kurper, Sandeliacapensis) are also found.
Sir Andrew Smith, the ‘Father of South African Zoology’ a Scottish army medical doctor who founded the South African Museum and became the Surgeon General of the British Army Medical Department during the Crimean War, also described the ‘Rocky’ and its sister species. That description was lost in the turmoil of the times.
George Ford, who lived in a farm near Bathurst, in 1831 was the first artist to have his fish illustrations published in SA. He said Ford was discovered at age 12, by the father of South African zoology, Andrew Smith, and through his guidance he became one the greatest illustrators in the country. Smith conducted several expeditions in southern Africa and took artists including Ford and Charles Bell. Ford became one of the best known artists at the Natural History Museum in London. Ford’s sketches during the Great Expedition of 1834-36 are in the William Cullen Library at the University of Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg.