[SASCON] Obituary for Dr. Luc De Vos

[Melanie Darlow]

Obituary for Dr Luc De Vos, Curator of Ichtyology, National Museum, Kenya. 
 
By: Dr Jos Snoeks, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium
 
Luc (Tuur) De Vos, a remarkable Belgian ichthyologist, died on Friday night, 13 June 2003. For some time he had suffered from kidney problems.  After being hospitalised in Nairobi, Kenya, for a lung infection, his kidneys failed and he soon passed away.
 
Tuur (most people will know him by this name) started his career in ichthyology in 1979 in the Africa Museum in Tervuren with a systematic revision of the African Schilbeidae (group of merely pelagic catfishes). This was part of his Ph.D. program under the direction of Prof. Dr. D. Thys van Audenaerde. After he finished his degree he left the museum in 1984 to work on the fishes of Rwanda in a collaborative program with the Rwandese Institute for Scientific Research. He lived in Gisenyi on the shores of Lake Kivu for three years. There he married his wife Clo and started a family. In 1988, he took a position as a professor at the Kisangani University in Congo for the Belgian Technical Cooperation. He explored the waters around Kisangani and much further afield, where few, if any, ichthyologists had sampled before, making valuable collections for the Tervuren Museum. He always claimed his time in the Congo were his best years. In 1990, he and several others in similar positions were called back to Belgium because of political problems. Back in Belgium he was contracted by the Leuven University until he got the chance to go back to his beloved Africa, this time to Burundi in another collaborative program. He first headed the ichthyology team at the start-up of a new regional centre for hydrobiology (CRRHA) in Bujumbura and later became project leader. He stayed on even during times of political unrest but eventually, early in 1996, had to return to Belgium. For the next year he first worked again at the Leuven University and then, temporarily, as an ichthyologist at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren.
 
In 1997 he joined the Flemish Technical Cooperation and was posted to Nairobi, Kenya, to become the head of the newly erected Ichthyology department at the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). With financial support from the Tervuren museum, he managed to collect fishes in virtually every river system and lake in Kenya. He regularly hit the national and international press headlines with his activities and discoveries, such as the re-discovery of the giant pancake-headed catfish (Pardiglanis tarabinii) of which previously only one specimen was once caught in a Somali river. He took care of Kenya's first coelacanth and was in the process of preparing a large exhibition on this fish in the NMK. The public aquaria he set up in the Museum attracted many tourists and visitors.
 
He was an outstanding field ichthyologist and I look back with much pleasure on the collecting expeditions we did together. He published about seventy articles and produced many reports. This is a remarkable achievement in view of the fact that he lived for so long in places without access to literature and reference collections and had to start from scratch with every new project. His remedy for these handicaps was to spend a large part of his holidays in Belgium in the Museum of Tervuren.
 
Tuur's latest professional dream was his East African Fish Diversity Project, which he launched recently. He was also leading a group of East African ichthyologists to produce faunal lists and compile primary data on the fresh-water fishes of the region for the IUCN databases.
 
Life was not always easy for Tuur, but he continued in his own particular way, not taking everything in life too seriously. For those who knew him well, there are plenty of anecdotes to remember and smile at. Many have enjoyed his warm hospitality. His work, he took very seriously. He practised ichthyology with a no-nonsense style and was critical of articles and reports that made things look better than they are.  Tuur was only 45 years 'young' and left a family of three children. He was for me a great colleague and a good friend, but most of all a genuine, good, warm person.



________________________________________
Mrs Melanie Darlow
Administrative Co-ordinator
Coelacanth Programme
SAIAB
P/Bag 1015
Grahamstown
6140
Tel: 046-6035830
Fax: 046-6222403
Web: www.coelacanth.ac.za
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