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Dr Leonard Compagno
Curator: Fish
Collections
Natural History Department
Iziko South African Museum
Box 61, Cape Town 8000
South Africa
Phone: +27 (0)21 481 3856
Fax: +27 (0)21 481 3993
e-mail: lcompagno@iziko.org.za Leonard J. V. Compagno (PhD, Stanford University,
1979, adjunct professor, San Francisco State University, 1979 to
1985) is curator of fishes in the Natural History Department and
heads the Shark Research Centre (SRC), a small research unit currently
including two predoctoral graduate students.
The Shark Research Centre was formally established
in December, 1986 at J.L.B. Smith Institute of Ichthyology in Grahamstown
and transferred to the South African Museum in 1989. The SRC in
turn evolved from L.J.V. Compagno's shark laboratories at Stanford
University and at the Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies in
California. The SRC is a unique organisation in South Africa and
is one of the few internationally that specialises in fundamental
research on aspects of the Class Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous fishes
(sharks, rays and chimaeroids) or sharklike fishes. Its areas of
interest are the systematics and biodiversity, morphology, evolution
and phylogeny, zoogeography, natural history, behavioural ecology,
rational exploitation, management, and conservation of cartilaginous
fishes.
The SRC serves as a local and international
source of public information on the shark-like fishes, including
lectures, advise to commercial fisheries and institutional research
bodies, to the news media, and to film-makers. SRC promotes a factual
view of the relationship of shark-like fishes to human activities.
See Publications for a list of
books, papers, articles, reports and other items from SRC and its
predecessors, and Projects for
recent work of the SRC.
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