History and activities

Members

The Australian Society For Fish Biology was founded in 1971 to promote fish studies and provide a forum for the exchange of information between fish biologists. The Society has over 600 members in 2003, drawn from across Australia and overseas, representing the government, research, educational and private sectors.

Annual conference

Annual Conferences have been held once every year since the Society's inception. They are now the highlight of the Society's calendar, providing a forum for members around Australia to meet and discuss their work. Since the first conference conducted by the Society in its own right, at Port Stephens in 1975, succeeding conferences have continued to be conducted most successfully, and in a relatively informal atmosphere despite consistent growth in both attendances and programs.

Workshops

To enhance its contribution to research, conservation and management of fish and their habitats in Australia, the Society decided to organise and hold workshops on specific topics in conjunction with it's annual conferences. The first such workshop, a two-day event on Australian Threatened Fishes, was held at the Arthur Rylah Institute, Melbourne, immediately prior to the Society's 1985 annual conference.

In addition to these major workshops, another series of workshops on fish collection management, organised independently by museum-affiliated members but held under the auspices of the Society, was initiated with a one-day program immediately after the 1985 Melbourne conference. Workshop topics have included the following:

• Legal sizes and their use in fisheries management
• Taking Stock: defining and managing shared resources
• Sustainable Fisheries Through Sustainable Habitat
• Fish Movement and Migration

In some years the Society has also hosted international conferences in place of the workshop (e.g. International Larval Fish Conference at Sydney in 1995 and the World Congress on Aquatic Protected Areas at Cairns in 2002).

Newsletter

The Society publishes a newsletter twice a year, which contains information of interest to the Society membership, including notices and information on Society activities and a bibliography of publications by Society members. The newsletter is available through the Members section of this site. The proceedings of Society-held workshops are usually produced separately as special publications, often with the assistance of other government and non-government organisations.