Otolith Atlas of Marine Fishes of Southern Africa and Adjacent Oceans

Malcolm J Smale is an accomplished marine biologist who has researched a number of marine taxa during a career of more than 45 years. He took up a post at the Port Elizabeth Museum at Bayworld as a researcher and curator of the fish otolith and cephalopod beak collections. These collections became central to his studies of trophic relationships in several marine apex predators. He participated in numerous research cruises along the east and west coasts of South Africa, and collaborated in fish surveys at numerous islands in the western Indian Ocean, alongside colleagues from the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity and other research institutions, often in efforts to build local fish collections. He is a qualified scientific diver and dive supervisor, which has facilitated his fish collecting work. He has contributed to more than 120 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and 30 book chapters, reviews or popular articles. He is Director and Chair of the Bayworld Centre for Research and Education in Gqeberha, South Africa, and has served on the Management Committee of the Institute for Coastal and Marine Research at Nelson Mandela University.

Gillian Watson obtained a BSc (Hons) degree from the University of Rhodesia. She then taught science at St Andrews International High School in Blantyre, Malawi. After emigrating to South Africa she took up a contract post at the Port Elizabeth Museum at Bayworld to work on the fish otolith collection in preparation of the Otolith Atlas of Southern African Marine Fishes (Smale et al. 1995). Following this she obtained an MSc degree from the University of Port Elizabeth by studying the shark species Squalus megalops. She eventually became the Collections Manager at the Port Elizabeth Museum at Bayworld, helping to organise the natural history collections in herpetology, marine mammals and marine biology—including the otolith and cephalopod beak collections. She processed the new otoliths and did the micrograph imaging for both Atlases. Working with the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity and other research institutions housing voucher fish specimens, she linked the assembled otoliths to the original fish in as many cases as possible.