I'm Oliver Crimmen, fish curator. I've been working since I was 19 years old here at the museum and fishes have taken over most of my life. We don't have every fish on the planet in the collections. I'm sure the Victorians would have liked that but the fact is we don't know yet how many fishes there are. We're still discovering them. The very beginnings of the collections in the 18th century, the Victorians were interested in the Empire and natural resources that they might want to exploit. Nowadays, we've got a very different focus. We're worried about what we might be doing to the planet. This collection, although it might have had different sort of motives behind it for some of its history, it's still continuing to provide answers to modern questions.


我是鱼类标本管理员奥利弗·克里曼，从19岁起，我就在这个博物馆工作，可以说鱼类占据了我的大半生。我们的收藏并没穷极地球上所有鱼类，当时兴起了商业捕鱼风潮，我想维多利亚时人们肯定希望捕得更多。事实上，我们也不知道地球上到底有多少种鱼类，我们还在不断探索，最早的收藏始于18世纪，维多利亚时代的人热衷于统治，以及对自然资源的开发。现在，我们的侧重点大有不同，我们担心人类行动会破坏地球。这里的收藏虽然出自不同时代，收藏的动机也各有不同，但它们的确解决了很多现代难题。