Clearing Up Confusion
Taxonomy proved a vital tool when Professor McCoy was called on to clear up confusion following a fish sighting at Williamstown in 1884. As it turned out, the fish that caused all the excitement was the Southern Hulafish, one of Port Phillip Bay's most common reef fish.
McCoy described the species for the first time in the Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria. His anecdotal notes highlight the value of the Prodromus, as a precursor of today's guidebooks, in preventing rumours of exotic sightings getting out of hand.
Southern Hulafish Pl.194
This little fish created a great sensation by appearing in large numbers about the middle of October, 1884, at the piers at Williamstown, in Hobson's Bay, and being reported to the Commissioner of Customs as the young of the Californian Salmon, were sent to me as an important matter to be determined.
Even the Acanthopterygious character of the dorsal fin, one might have supposed, would have prevented any one acquainted with fish from confounding this with any sort of Salmon. The Inspectors of Fisheries and others dealing officially with the fishes of our waters are greatly retarded in their business for want of recognisable figures of most of the native sorts, many of which, like the present species, have never been figured.
The illustrations of the natural colours of the living fishes which I expect to present in these Decades will, I hope, diminish the difficulty of recognising them in future, and enable observations on habits, migrations, and times and places of breeding of the different sorts to be attributed correctly to the definitely-named and classified species.