Details for the 2010 British Killifish Association Convention have been announced and it's looking to be one of the best yet!

There are lectures from the world renowned Ruud Wildekamp and Jouke Van Der Zee as well as the usual fish show and auctions where species from all over the world come together to be marvelled at and traded. If you're not sure who Jouke Van Der Zee is, then see more information about him below.

If you've never attended a BKA convention, you should start now!

Full details can be found here.

A well known killifish artist, Ken McKeighan, has donated some of his works as awards in this years Fish Show. For more information and some examples of his work see this page.

The booking form with full instructions is here.

If you wish to prepare auction fish in advance, please contact convention@bka.org.uk for the correct form and pre-allocation of a prefix letter.

Jouke Van Der Zee
Several people have been asking for information about Jouke Van Der Zee as little has been heard about him here in the UK. Jouke is without question the worlds leading authority on Congolese Killifish, but few here in the UK will know of him as he is somewhat more retiring than other more well known personalities in the hobby.

For the past 5/6 years we have been been trying to persuade Jouke Van Der Zee to come to our Convention and talk to us about Congo and its many Killifish. At last we have succeeded! To the best of our knowledge this will be the first time that Jouke has given such a presentation outside The Netherlands.

Jouke commenced research into early embryology of fishes in 1978 using N. korthausae, Guentheri, Fundulopanchax filamentosum and Puerzli and also joining the KFN in that same year. After graduating in the early 1980's, he has spent most of his spare time at the Royal African Museum, Tervuren, Belgium where there are substantial quantities of documents, records, specimens etc covering the whole period of Belgiums involvement in what used to be known as The Belgian Congo and also the period since the country gained independance. Jouke has unearthed a lot of previously unknown information about the fish that exist in the Congo basin and several new descriptions are currently in the pipeline.

I have heard Jouke, at the KFN Convention 2 years ago, give the forerunner to the presentation he will make at our Convention. This was fascinating and on its own would justify attendance at this years Convention by anyone with an interest in Killifish. Jouke is not however the only invited speaker at this years Convention. We also have Ruud Wildekamp making a return visit. Ruud is a regular visitor and speaker at our conventions and this year will be making two presentations, not only a review of the genus Nothobranchius where he is recognised as the worlds leading authority but also he will be presenting a review of the West African genera, Fundulopanchax, Callopanchax etc. Ruud is perhaps most well known for his work with Nothobranchius over the past 40 or so years, but his overall knowledge of Killifish is such that he is at home talking on just about any of the Killifish genera - as delegates at previous BKA conventions have realised.

If you want to see some of the publications etc of Jouke then I would suggest that you Google ( without the quotes) "jouke van der zee killifish"