Knee Deep in the Catfishes of North East India.

Julian Dignall (Jools) runs the vast planetcatfish.com website (http://www.planetcatfish.com) and has spent a fair bit of time when not doing this, running around the world with a net. This evening's talk, Monday 22nd November 2010, was about one such trip and as the title suggests, was around a trip to Calcutta and almost directly north right up to the border.

Starting in the foothills of the Himalaya, the talk showed many catfishes, loaches and other local fish found by various methods of collecting. The expedition moved out of the hills into the plains and more and more fishes were encountered and photographed.

Jools also covered many fishes found in the local markets and also provided updates on the latest taxonomic placement of many of the fishes - including a species that was collected on the trip and had only been described to science in the week prior to the talk!

The talk ended with the fishes of the lower Hugli river on the outskirts of Calcutta (or Kolkata as it is now known) and a variety of fishes found in a local exporters stock.

A complimentary article by another member of the expedition, Finn, Antti Vourela, is available on the planetcatfish website here: http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworld/shanesworld.php?article_id=141&title=Exploring+West+Bengal+for+aquarium+fishes

A big THANK YOU Jools, from all of the KAS members and committee, for a thoroughly enjoyable, informative and interesting talk.