A MAN who started his career helping out in a tropical fish shop as a schoolboy has become the longest-serving employee at Chester Zoo.

Mike Crumpler was first given a job as a junior helper in the original aquarium 40 years ago. And over four decades he has seen major changes, not just in the zoo’s physical landscape but also in its prominence on the world stage.

Chester Zoo today is a key player in global conservation and animal welfare. Mike is now the team leader in the aquarium, having helped to save several species from extinction and become a respected expert among his contemporaries around the world.

‘I started out straight from school, without a degree or any formal qualifications,’ said Mike, who lives in Chester with wife Margaret, a classroom assistant at Dorin Park Special School in Upton.

He took up fish keeping as a hobby when he was aged about eight.

‘I was just interested in fish, like many young kids are,’ he said. ‘My fascination grew and then I got a job helping out in a shop in Chester. I learned a lot there before I came over to the zoo.’

In the early days Mike’s role centred on day-to-day maintenance of the aquarium, ensuring fish were healthy, regularly fed and that the old concrete tanks were clean and disease-free.

The current aquarium is one of the oldest buildings at the zoo, having been built and opened in 1952, the same year Mike was born.

Mike has been involved in some significant triumphs, particularly with the breeding of rare seahorses and fish species from destinations as far afield as Cameroon, Mexico, and Sri Lanka. Fish bred at Chester have been sent to collections in South Africa, North America and Russia to name a few.

Such is the extent of Mike’s work at the zoo that he no longer keeps fish at home.

‘It stopped being a hobby 40 years ago. It’s a full-time occupation and more. I am privileged to be able to work with some of the most exotic species in the world, but having spent all day working with the fish here, the last thing I want to do is go home and start having to clean out more tanks!’