Marine taxonomist dubbed ‘Dr. Fish’
Jack Randall, a distinguished ichthyologist and coral specialist who discovered and named more species of fish than anyone in history, died April 26 in his home in Kaneohe, Hawaii. He was 95.
His daughter, Lori O’Hara, said the cause was presumed to be complications from cancer.
Following the tradition of naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin, Mr. Randall spent much of his career classifying organisms, engaging in the laborious and tedious branch of science known as taxonomy.
Based for more than a half-century at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop history and science museum in Honolulu, he spent countless hours poring over the minutiae of fish specimens, from scale counts to body-part measurements, to find the minute details that distinguish different species.
By the time of his death, he had described and named more than 830 fish. That number will rise in the coming years as his colleagues finalize numerous papers still in the works. His wellearned nicknames were “Dr. Fish” or “the Fish Man.”
Melanie Ide, president and chief executive of the Bishop Museum, called Mr. Randall’s contributions immeasurable. Everything in biology, ecology and conservation — even the hunt for blockbuster pharmaceuticals hiding in plain sight in living organisms — all depends on knowing what organisms you’re looking at, she said.
“It’s the science upon which everything else is built,” Ms. Ide said. “Without the baseline fundamental units of data about life on
the planet — in this case, in the ocean — you can’t understand systems, and you can’t understand interactions, and you can’t understand impacts.”
Mr. Randall’s early National Science Foundationfunded work on diet and behavior in Atlantic reef fish proved essential to understanding how those ecosystems have changed over time. And his 1958 foundational paper on the causative agent behind ciguatera poisoning, a foodborne illness experienced by tens of thousands of people annually, has been cited hundreds of times by fellow scientists.
Mr. Randall published more than 900 papers, wrote more than two dozen books and book chapters, and dozens of popular-science articles. He won the highest honors in his profession, including the International Coral Reef Society’s Darwin Medal.
Richard Pyle, a senior curator of ichthyology at the Bishop Museum, said Mr. Randall was a generous mentor.
“He wasn’t in it for the glory. He wasn’t in it for the fame. He wasn’t in it for the recognition,” Mr. Pyle said. “I think that’s probably what sets him apart the most.”
Mr. Randall conducted his last dive in 2014 to celebrate his 90th birthday. At that point, the nerves in his legs had begun to fail him. “I can swim better than I can walk,” he mused to Hakai Magazine in 2016.