Welcoming Address 



IzADORE Barrett 

 Director of the Southwest Fisheries Center 



ON behalf of the National Marine Fisheries Service's Center Directors, sponsors of the Symposium on the Ontogeny 

 and Systematics of Fishes, I am pleased and honored to welcome you to La JoUa. We are here to honor the memory 

 of an outstanding biologist, Elbert Halvor Ahlstrom, known to his friends and colleagues as Ahlie, and his contributions 

 to fisheries science. 



As fishery biologists we all recognize the vital importance and contributions of systematics and students of evolution 

 to the development of fishery science. Less well known or appreciated is the unique role and interrelationship of the 

 early life history studies of fishes and the assessment of the role of ontogenetic characters in fish systematics. This was, 

 of course, the field of fisheries research to which Ahlie dedicated 40 years of his professional life and where he initially 

 evolved the special methods and techniques which have so greatly influenced the work of fishery biologists around the 

 world. 



I know that I speak for the Directors of the four fisheries centers— the Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center in 

 Seattle, the Southwest Fisheries Center in La Jolla, the Northeast Fisheries Center in Woods Hole, and the Southeast 

 Fisheries Center in Miami when I say that I am proud that the National Marine Fisheries Service is the sponsor of this 

 symposium. I believe that this gathering will be a landmark in fisheries science, a unique event which has brought 

 together eminent scientists from 10 countries to present 87 papers reviewing the major fish groups, with particular 

 attention to ontogenetic characters and their utility in assessing phylogenetic relationships. I fully anticipate that the 

 resulting symposium volume which will be based on the papers presented here will stand as a definitive work in larval 

 fish biology for many years to come. 



Again, a warm welcome to all of you and especially to Marge Ahlstrom who is seated in the audience this morning. 

 I hope that the weather and circumstances will cooperate and that your stay here in one of the most attractive cities of 

 the United States will be pleasant and productive. 



P.O. Box 271, La Jolla, California 92038. 



