By the death of George Tatton Atkinson at Lowestoft on the 30th November, 1974, in his ninetieth year, the last link is broken with those famous pioneering days when the M.B.A. undertook, on behalf of the Government, the first official English fishery investigations by opening a special laboratory at Lowestoft in 1902 under the direction of Dr Walter Garstang. It is fitting that the life of George Atkinson should be recorded in our pages. Born in 1885 he came from a great sea-faring family and combined his love of the sea with an intense interest in marine natural history. As soon as he left school in 1904 he joined Garstang as an assistant working particularly on the biology of the plaice.