TThhee NNaammeess YYoouu KKnnooww,, tthhee PPeeooppllee YYoouu DDoonn’’tt:: Dr. Heinrich Kuhl & Dr. Johan van Hasselt Derek P.S. Tustin

I’ve fallen into a bit of a trap when thinking about the various ichthyological explorers I’ve been introducing you to. I first wrote on Dr. Marinus Boeseman who passed away at the age of 90. Next I wrote on Dr. Herbert Axelrod, who is still alive and will be celebrating his 84th birthday this year. That was followed by my introducing and interviewing Dr. Gerald Allen who is currently 68 years of age. Last month it was Dr. Louis Agassiz who passed at the age of 66. (May we all live such long lives.) I had come to expect that the honour of having a species of anything named after a person implied that the person had lived a long life full of scientific contributions. But I encountered two extraordinary gentlemen who proved that a long life is not necessarily a reflection of the quality or quantity of contributions to science. I would like to introduce you to not one but two individuals who were on a pace to become great explorers, but were both cut down in the prime of their lives; Dr. Heinrich Kuhl and Dr. Johan Coenraad van Hasselt.

Dr. Heinrich Kuhl

Born on September 17th, 1797 in the small German town of Hanau, Heinrich grew up with an interest in nature that was encouraged under the tutelage of Johann Leisler, a noted German naturalist and friend of his fathers. He went on to study natural history at the University of in the . There he worked for Coenraad Temminck, a noted ornithologist, and published his first paper at the age of nineteen on three new species of German bats, including one, Nyctalus leisleri, named in honour of his mentor.

Dr. Johan van Hasselt

While little is recorded about Heinrich Kuhl, even less is known about Johan Coenraad van Hasselt. What is known is that he was born someplace in the Netherlands, also in 1797. It is not known what path he took in his early years, but it ended up with him also attending the , studying medicine.

Together They…

Somehow, somewhere, Heinrich Kuhl and Johan van Hasselt met while they were studying in Groningen, and they came to be life-long friends. Both were students of Professor Theodorus van Swinderen, a noted zoologist, and it seems that they grew closer as the years passed. In 1818 the two took a walking tour of , attending various lectures along the way, and then in 1819 they travelled together to Paris, where they met numerous luminaries in the fields of biology, and ichthyology.

After their graduation, the two were contracted by the Dutch government to undertake a scientific expedition to the Dutch West Indies to study and obtain samples of the various flora and fauna, and to report back to the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie (National Museum of Natural History) in Leiden.

On July 11th, 1820, Heinrich Kuhl and Johan van Hasselt, in the company of Gerrit van Raaltena (a professional preparer) and Gerrit Keultjes (a nature artist), set sail on the ship Nordloh. They traveled to what is now Jakarta, making stops in at Madeira, the Cape of Good Hope and the Cocos Islands along the way. In December 1820 they arrived in Jakarta and met with Governor General van der Capellen, who put a house at their disposal and assisted in preparing them for their explorations.

During the next eight months the expedition did as they were tasked and in that time they sent 65 different species of , 2000 samples of , 300 samples of and amphibians, numerous insects and crustaceans samples and 1400 samples of fish back to the National Museum of Natural History.

But as seems to be common with these early explorers, the zeal with which they drove themselves and the climate and conditions, took a toll. On September 14th, 1821, just three days shy of his 24th birthday, Heinrich Kuhl died as a result of a liver infection. Two days later, Gerrit Keultjes, the expedition’s artist, also perished.

This left Johan van Hasselt and Gerrit van Raaltena as the two surviving members of the expedition. They tarried on, continuing the work as assigned, but two years later, after an arduous journey to Bantam in western Java, Johan van

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Tank Talk May 2011 / Volume 38, Number 9 Page Hasselt also died. Gerrit van Raaltena valiantly tried to continue. He continued collecting in various regions and sent more samples back to the Netherlands, but in 1829 he too died in the Dutch West Indies.

Most of the samples they had gathered safely made their way to the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden, the Netherlands, but not one of the expedition members returned alive to study them. Others, notably Achille Valenciennes and George Cuvier in their work Historie naturelle des Poissons (Natural History of Fish), continued they work and described their discoveries.

The Discoveries

In December 1822, a year after Heinrich Kuhl’s passing and barely a year before his own, Johan van Hasselt sent to letters to their mentor Ceonraad Temminck, which contained the notes both he and Heinrick had prepared on their discoveries.

And what did they discover? They were the first to describe two families of fish, Helostomatidae and Rhyacichthyidae, described 22 new genera of fish, and 50 previously undescribed species - all in eight months.

In Honour of…

Dr. Heinrich Kuhli

The Fish · (Shortfin devil ray [Marine]) · Neotrygon kuhlii (Blue-spotted stingray [Marine]) · (Kuhli Loach) · Pontinus kuhlii (Offshore rockfish [Marine]) Mobula kuhlii

Note: It’s “Kuhl’s loach” or “kuhlii loach”, not “coolie loach”. A “coolie” is an offensive and pejorative term referring to unskilled Asian labourers. While they do sound the same, referring to the wonderful little fish using the inaccurate term is actually rather offensive, and deprives Dr. Heinrich Kuhl of his deserved respect.

Non-Fish · Axis kuhlii (Bawean deer) · Callithrix kuhlii (Kuhl’s marmoset) · Pipistrellus kuhlii (Kuhl’s pipistrelle – bat) · Scotophilus kuhlii (Lesser Asiatic yellow bat)

Axis kuhlii

Dr. Johan van Hasselt

The Fish · Belontia hasselti (Malay combtail) · Callogobius hassektii (Hasselt’s goby [Marine]) · Chiloscyllium hasseltii (Hasselt’s bamboshark [Marine]) · Lepidocephalichthys hasselti (Hasselt’s loach) · Osteochilus hasseltii (Hasselt’s bonylip barb) · Silurichthys hasseltii (Hasselt’s leaf catfish)

Belontia hasselti

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Non-Fish · Acrorumohra hasseltii (fern) · Dipterocarpus hasseltii (tree) · Leptobrachium hasseltii (Java spadefoot toad) · Rafflesia hasseltii (parasitic flowering plant)

Leptobrachium hasseltii

I started looking into Dr. Heinrich Kuhl because of my familiarity with Kuhl’s Loach, commonly called the Kuhli Loach. It wasn’t until I got deep into research that I found out what a symbiotic relationship Dr. Heinrich Kuhl and Dr. Johan van Hasselt shared. While the Kuhli Loach may be the fish we see most often, and because of that remember Dr. Kuhl’s name, I hope that the next time you see it, you will remember the contributions and sacrifice that both Dr. Kuhl and Dr. van Hasselt made to and for our hobby.

Pangio kuhlii

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