Walter Rowe Courtenay, Jr. (1933–2014)

Abstract

W ALTER R. COURTENAY, JR., ichthyologist and retired professor, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, died in Gainesville, Florida, on 30 January 2014 at age 80. Walt was born in Neenah, Wisconsin, on 6 November 1933, son of Walter and Emily Courtenay. Walt’s interest in fish began at a young age as evidenced by a childhood diary in which at 13 years of age he wrote about his first catch—a two-and-a-half pound ‘‘pike’’ from Lake Winnebago. When Walt turned ten, the family moved from Wisconsin to Nashville, Tennessee, the move precipitated by his father accepting a position as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. During those early days in Nashville, Walt’s father would take summers off and travel to Michigan to teach at Camp Miniwanca along the shore of Lake Michigan where father and son honed their angling skills. It was also at that time Walt’s father had definite views on what his son should be doing in adult life—in Walt’s case it was to become a medical doctor. However, his Woods Hole internship in marine biology and oceanography toward the end of his undergraduate years was a transformative experience for him so much so that he abandoned all ideas of becoming a medical doctor and instead specialized in ichthyology and oceanography. Apart from the inherent interest and opportunities Woods Hole opened to him, being back at the shore of a large body of water, in this case the Atlantic Ocean, was far more interesting than sitting in lectures on organic chemistry. With that, Walt completed his B.A. degree at Vanderbilt University in 1956. In 1960 while in graduate school in Miami, Walt met and married Francine Saporito, and over the next several years had two children, Walter III and Catherine. He went on to receive his M.S. in 1961 from The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami on the systematics of the genus Haemulon (grunts) and his Ph.D. degree in 1965 working under his advisor C. Richard ‘‘Dick’’ Robins, also at Miami, with his dissertation entitled ‘‘Atlantic Fishes of the Genus Rypticus (Grammistidae): Systematics and Osteology.’’ Dick and wife Catherine Robins, also a fellow biologist, thought of him as a great friend to have. They fondly recalled that those of us who knewWalt in his early grad student days valued his sense of humor and unmistakable laugh, much of which was directed at bureaucratic foolishness and pomposity. However, he also had a very serious side when it came to justice and responsibility. During his graduate student years, Walt was primarily a fish morphologist, studying the structural variations of marine fishes found in the Western Atlantic. He devoted much of his time searching for and documenting certain anatomical traits useful in distinguishing one species from another, such as species-specific pigmentation patterns of juvenile fishes and scale and lateral line structures. In addition to his own research, he generously provided expert technical assistance to colleagues. Prior to completing his Ph.D., Walt accepted a position as a faculty member at Duke University (1963–65) followed by a position at Boston University (1965–67). Shortly thereafter Walt returned to Florida where he became a tenured professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton (1967–1999) where he twice served as department chair. Although Walt was back in Florida and close to the ocean, his research interests underwent a major change away from fish morphology. He soon began to take notice that Florida’s extensive network of manmade canals was becoming increasingly occupied by non-native fishes, in particular and most notably the Walking Catfish (Clarias batrachus). As a result, much of Walt’s early work was focused on determining the distributions of Clarias and other fishes typically found in the aquarium trade such as poeciliids and cichlids which by the 1960s were already established in the inland waters of Florida. Walt clearly saw the potential for problems associated with exotic species early on and devoted nearly all of his career to research and education on this issue. At various times in his career, Walt also held research appointments with the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He also served as a consultant on introduced fishes for the Fishery Resources and Environment Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Budapest and Rome in 1988, the Foundation for Research Development, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria, South Africa in 1988, the South Australia Department of Fisheries, Adelaide, Australia in 1989, and the Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States in 1991–92. For the 1986–87 academic Fig. 1. Walter R. Courtenay, Jr. in 2008.