Jane Goodfellow and Alan Jardine of Capetown, South Africa, are in town to assist Fishey Business with sales of fish tanks and other possible ventures. Photo by Clinton Lewis

The clown fish may not be native to Kentucky. It may not even be native to fresh water. But a South African man is seeking a visa to work in Bowling Green so he can start a hatchery for the tiny form of marine life here. Its something Ive been very passionate about for 28 years, said Alan Jardine, current director of World of Birds Wildlife Sanctuary and Monkey Park in Cape Town, South Africa. The Bowling Green hatchery would be part of the local pet store Fishey Business, which is owned by Mitch Gibbs of Warren County. Mitch is very keen to put up a hatchery, said Jardine, who is in Bowling Green this month with his friend and co-worker Jane Goodfellow, to visit with Gibbs and his wife, Diana. Jardine and Goodfellow met the Gibbs family last year when they all were attending the American Zoo and Aquatic Conference. Jardine was presenting his paper, Environmental Enrichment for Clown Trigger Fish, at the conference. Hed already written a book about marine life and had read an article Gibbs had written about his patented rotating aquarium. The two couples soon became fast friends. Mitch and Diana Gibbs invited Jardine and Goodfellow to the Marine Aquarium Conference of North America last year. Jardine and Goodfellow jumped at the chance, and after returning to Africa, kept in touch with the Gibbses via e-mail. Not too long ago, Mitch Gibbs offered Jardine the job of opening a hatchery in Bowling Green. Goodfellow was asked to come to the United States to market Gibbs rotating aquarium through Aquatic Revolution, the business Gibbs started after he invented the cylindrical aquarium that constantly turns. Although Goodfellow currently is marketing manager at World of Birds, she, like Jardine, has a love of fish. She thinks marketing the rotating aquarium, which was patented in the late 1990s, and seeing Jardine open a hatchery here if their visas come through will contribute to preserving the environment. The whole idea these days is to breed without taking fish from the wild, to protect the existing reefs, she said. Goodfellow and Jardine have long cared about protecting all kinds of life. The World of Birds Web site says, The Sanctuary also serves as a hospital, orphanage and breeding center, caring for injured birds and animals and breeding threatened species behind-the-scenes. Some threatened species successfully bred include our national bird (the Blue Crane), the Bald Ibis, the NeNe or Hawaiian Marmosets and Tamarins. In addition, Goodfellow once worked as a veterinary nurse. While running her own advertising agency for 18 years, she managed horse stables in her spare time. During his long career of working with animals, Jardine has worked as great ape keeper at the Johannesburg Zoo in South Africa. He also has been general curator and training specialist at the national zoo in Pretoria, South Africa. A photo of Jardine in a South African newspaper shows him teaching a gorilla how to nurse her new baby. The gorilla, which was in captivity and had never seen another gorilla nurse a newborn, was at a loss when it came to taking care of her child. Newspaper image after newspaper image from South Africa shows Jardine in all kinds of situations with animals:Hes hugging chimpanzees. Hes cuddling a lion cub. But all the time he was doing his zoo work, he had an aquarium at home, according to Goodfellow. If he lives in Bowling Green, Jardine will have an aquarium, too. But he will have to adapt to a life without apes, a life without elephants and lion cubs. But Jardine and Goodfellow think they can hack it. I think any change is an adaptation, he said. Well find interesting things, Goodfellow insisted. The pair has already enjoyed visiting Mammoth Cave National Park, Smiths Groves antiques district and the Kentucky State Fair just to name a few. We just have to learn to say yall and then well hit the ground running, Jardine said with a smile. Goodfellow, whose job marketing the rotating aquarium would take her to zoos, hotels and the like across the country, said she hopes to soon speak several brands of Yankee.