Fishkeeper: UA Biologist Serves As Fish Librarian

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – In some ways, The University of Alabama’s Bernie Kuhajda is like a librarian. People regularly check out, use, and return – free of charge – items from among some 1 million samples lining the shelves where he works.

But Kuhajda does not loan books; he loans fish. Officially, Kuhajda is the collections manager of UA’s ichthyological collection, but sometimes he jokingly uses a slightly less official title – keeper of the dead fish.

“People are just amazed that the University has a library of fish and that we have 85,000 jars of cataloged fish,” Kuhajda said. “It’s definitely a feature of the University and the biological sciences department that is not well known.”

For the past 13 years, Kuhajda has maintained the fish collection, which is the largest in the state, third largest in the Southeast (trailing only Tulane and the University of Florida) and the 11th largest in the nation. The 1 million or so fish specimens, which come from all over the world, represent some 1,600 different species.

The specimens, cataloged within a computer program with data available via the Internet, serve to inventory both the state’s fish diversity and also the general health of its ecosystems. Alabama is home to more freshwater fish than any other state in the nation, Kuhajda said. The collection is regularly used to help answer ecological and environmental questions and questions pertaining to the formation and upkeep of the existing biodiversity. The collection also includes the original specimens used in writing the scientific descriptions of many new species from North America.

Students and researchers at other universities and from other laboratories contact Kuhajda and arrange to check out a fish for further study. Researchers might, for example, borrow a fish, remove its’ stomach contents as part of a study, then reinsert the stomach contents in the fish and return it to UA.

“About once every two weeks we get requests from people to either borrow preserved specimens to study or to get tissues from our frozen material,” Kuhajda said.

Kuhajda even has his own version of a “bookmobile,” which he calls the “The Traveling Fish Show.” With this educational outreach program, each year hundreds of elementary, middle, and high school students have an opportunity to learn more about fish.

Some of the strongest reactions come from children in the pre-school to third grade range, Kuhajda said. “They can’t believe the things that I am passing around are real. They always ask, ‘Are these real?’ A lot of kids that age have never held a real fish.”

The creatures initially intimidate some children, but they warm up fast, Kuhajda said. “After the third or fourth fish, the kids who wouldn’t touch them at all are all touching them. What I’m really amazed about is how well the kids can identify a fish just based on pictures they’ve seen. Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to which fish the teachers tend to go over in class, so with the Traveling Fish Show they can go from what they’ve seen in a book to a real specimen.” The fish that probably gets some of strongest reaction from children is the lumpsucker. Found in Alaska’s Bering Sea, the fish “looks like Jaba the Hut from Star Wars,” Kuhajda said.

The ichthyological collection also includes frozen fish tissues. Through DNA testing of these tissues, molecular and biochemical studies are possible. The collection has been designated a permanent repository by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for all endangered sturgeon specimens and tissues.

Most of the fish are freshwater varieties from Alabama, but the collection also includes saltwater fish and fish from Central and South America, Canada, Europe, southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

The specimens are housed on campus in the Scientific Collections Building. Kuhajda works under the guidance of Dr. Richard Mayden, a professor of biological sciences and the collection’s curator.

“The forest service is very interested in the historic distribution of fishes in the national forests and how the distribution of fishes has changed over time,” Kuhajda said.

While the foresters use biologists to gauge the current population of various fish within their forests, that doesn’t help them to know which fish have faded or are fading from the forests. However, accessing the computerized data from the collection, which includes exactly when and where each of the fish was collected, does just that.

“This gives them a historical perspective of how the forests has changed over time – in respect to fish,” Kuhajda said.

Note: Bernie Kuhajda is scheduled to give a series of biodiversity presentations to Rock Quarry Elementary students at their Tuscaloosa school on Friday, Oct. 27, between 8:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. and others between noon and 12:30 p.m. and between 1:30 and 2 p.m. School contact: Missy Davis, 205/554-1404.