Stephen Hamar Midgley (7 December 1918 – 28 September 2014) was an Australian

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 35,800 species of fish had been described as of March 2 ...

. From 1977 to 1979, he served as the third President of the Australian Society for Fish Biology.

Early life

Midgley was born in

Wynnum, Queensland Wynnum is a coastal suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The suburb is a popular destination in Brisbane due to its coastline, jetty and tidal wading pool. In the , Wynnum had a population of 14,036 people. Wynnum and the adjoi ...

on 7 December 1918.Stuart J. Rowlan
"Stephen Hamar Midgley"
Australian Society for Fish Biology Hall of Fame. Accessed 21 July 2019. In October 1939, he joined the

Australian Army The Australian Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of Australia. It is a part of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. The Army is commanded by the Chief of Army ...

and fought overseas during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, serving with the 7th Division, 2/5th Field Artillery Regiment, first in

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

and then in

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

. Midgley left the Army in 1945 and returned to Queensland, where he became a woodworker and furniture maker.Mick Fletoridis (2014
"Vale: Hamar Midgley"
''Fishing World''. Published 1 October 2014. Accessed 21 July 2019. He married his wife Mary in 1942, in

Brisbane, Queensland Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

Fish research

Beginning in the early 1950s, Midgley became a self-taught expert on

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

freshwater fishes. His first work was a study of

Australian bass The Australian bass (''Percalates novemaculeata'') is a small-to-medium-sized species of primarily freshwater (but estuarine spawning) ray-finned fish found in coastal rivers and streams along the east coast of Australia. A member of the genu ...

(''Macquaria novemaculeata'') in the Maroochy and

Noosa The Shire of Noosa () is a local government area about north of Brisbane in the Sunshine Coast district of South East Queensland, Australia. The shire covers an area of . It existed as a local government entity from 1910 until 2008, when it w ...

rivers, and he was the first to show that this species was

catadromous Fish migration is animal migration, mass relocation by fish from one area or body of water to another. Many types of fish migrate on a regular basis, on time scales ranging from daily to annually or longer, and over distances ranging from a few ...

. In the 1960s, he completed the first official stocking of Australian native fish, releasing

southern saratoga The southern saratoga (''Scleropages leichardti''), also known as the spotted bonytongue, spotted saratoga, or simply saratoga, is a freshwater bony fish native to Australia. It belongs to the subfamily Osteoglossinae, or arowanas, a primitive gro ...

(''Scleropages leichardti'') into

Borumba Dam The Borumba Dam is a rock-fill dam, rock-fill embankment dam, embankment dam with an Spillway#Types, un-gated spillway located across the Yabba Creek, a tributary of the Mary River (Queensland), Mary River, in the Wide Bay–Burnett region of Quee ...

on the

Sunshine Coast Sunshine Coast may refer to: * Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia **Sunshine Coast Region, a local government area of Queensland named after the region **Sunshine Coast Stadium * Sunshine Coast (British Columbia), geographic subregion of the Br ...

. Midgley also undertook research on the reproductive behaviour of southern saratoga, on hormone-induced breeding and long-distance transportation of native fish, and on sexing fish using a catheter. Although Midgley's early research was self-funded, between 1964 and 1994 he worked full-time as a fisheries consultant. Mary often accompanied Midgley on his field trips, which continued as late as 2001. He co-wrote the ''Field Guide of Freshwater Fishes of Australia'', with Gerald R. Allen and Mark Allen."Field guide to the freshwater fishes of Australia / G.R. Allen, S.H. Midgley, M. Allen."

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

. Accessed 21 July 2019. Midgley died on 28 September 2014 in

Bli Bli, Queensland Bli Bli ( ) is a rural town and locality in the Sunshine Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the locality of Bli Bli had a population of 10,138 people. Geography A few kilometres inland from the Maroochydore urban area, Bli Bli ris ...

Legacy

In 1975, Midgley was elected to the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists, and was granted Emeritus status in 1992. In 1994, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

for his contributions to freshwater fish research. Midgley served as the third President of the Australian Society for Fish Biology from 1977-79,"Past ASFB Presidents"
ASFB official website, archived 28 February 2014. Accessed 21 July 2019. and was later inducted into their Hall of Fame. Vic McCristal, in his book ''Rivers and the Sea'', wrote that: "In northern Australia there are dozens of rivers that most of us have never heard of. They contain huge volumes of fresh water, and what little we do know of them is due to Hamar and his wife Mary." Three fish species were named in his honour: the silver cobbler (''Arius midgleyi''),

Midgley's grunter ''Pingalla midgleyi'' is a species of ray-finned fish in the family Terapontidae known by the common names black-blotch grunter and Midgley's grunter. It is endemic to the Northern Territory of Australia, where it occurs in the Alligator, Kather ...

(''Pingalla midgleyi'') and Midgley’s carp gudgeon (''

Hypseleotris ''Hypseleotris'', or carp gudgeons, are a genus of small fresh and brackish water fishes in the family Eleotridae. Fish of this genus are found in rivers and estuaries connected to the tropical Indo-Pacific region. They are sometimes seen in the ...

'' sp).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Midgley, Hamar 1918 births 2014 deaths Australian ichthyologists 20th-century Australian zoologists Australian Army personnel of World War II