Ichthyology

The Randall legacy

The overwhelming majority of the collection was accumulated through the research career of Dr. John E. “Jack” Randall, who authored more publications (880) and documented more new species of coral-reef fishes (815) than any ichthyologist in history, publishing until the end of his life at age 95 in 2020. The collection holds virtually all of the known species of reef and shore fishes of the Indo-Pacific — and the holotype of the Megamouth Shark (Megachasma pelagios), the most surprising shark discovery of the twentieth century.

Randall’s protégés, Dr. Richard L. Pyle and Brian D. Greene, continue the tradition of exploration, pioneering mixed-gas closed-circuit rebreather technology to survey mesophotic coral ecosystems — the coral-reef “twilight zone” below conventional SCUBA depths — discovering more than a hundred new species. More recently, the collection has expanded to include larval fishes, led by Cassie Ka‘apu-Lyons.