Lawrence Kent

Our speaker is Lawrence Kent of Seattle who will share with us the presentation he made in July at the American Cichlid Association’s last annual convention — “Benin There, Done That! Seeking Freshwater Fish in West Africa.” He will follow that presentation with a mini-talk on Nigerian or Ethiopian fish, time permitting. Questions will be encouraged!

The Benin presentation will cover his 2018 collecting trip to Benin, a small West African country nestled between Nigeria and Togo that is home to a good variety of cichlids, killifish, gobies, tetras, and other fish, some in the hobby, some not yet.

Lawrence works for a humanitarian foundation based in Seattle combatting poverty and malnutrition in Africa and South Asia. He travels abroad frequently for his job and takes advantage of these trips to look for freshwater fish on the side. Covid, unfortunately, has shut down international trips for a while.

Lawrence has made fish presentations in twenty-five cities on three continents, collected fish in 23 countries, and published two dozen articles in Tropical Fish Hobbyist, Amazonas, the Cichlid News, the Buntbarsche Bulletin, American Currents, and the German magazines DATZ, AKFS, and BSSW Report . Lawrence currently serves as an Associate Editor for Amazonas magazine and as a judge in the North American category of the Biotope Aquarium Design contest. He keeps 30 tanks at home filled with African cichlids, catfish, killies, and tetras, Southeast Asian labyrinths, and self-collected native fish.