Even at age 70, Melven Brown still manages to grab his fishing rod and his scuba gear and spend some much-needed time getting up close and personal with the ocean floor.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Woonona man loves nothing more than making the short journey from his brother's Port Stephens home to a nearby rocky reef and spending hours under water.
"Age is catching up with me a little bit, I don't get out as much as I'd like to now," he said.
"But when I do go, I find it all comes back quite naturally to me; I've been diving my whole life."
On Australia Day, Mr Brown received an AM for his service to recreational and sports fishing and scuba diving, recognising his involvement in a range of organisations and advisory bodies.
He told the Mercury, he was thrilled to receive the award, noting it was a coup for someone in the fishing world to be honoured.
"A lot of people who work in recreational fishing management don't get recognised, so I feel like it's a bit groundbreaking," he said.
"It came completely out of the blue but I'm humbled; there are so many people involved in recreational fishing, so for my contribution to be recognised is very exciting."
Mr Brown first took up spear fishing in 1962 and quickly started volunteering with conservation and management groups on a regional and state level.
He headed off to try his hand at abalone diving and prawn trawling before settling in Woonona, where his work soon caught the attention of several national fishing bodies.
He became a life member of the Australian Underwater Federation, a charter member of the Historical Diving Society of Australia and South-East Asia and was an executive member of the Australian Recreational and Sport Fishing Confederation for a decade.
He also worked on taskforces for abalone and rock lobster management - roles he is most proud of.
"We did a lot of work around the management of rock lobster," he said.
"We introduced tagging and maximum and minimum size limits … We wanted to make sure we managed numbers correctly so we would have a successful recreational and commercial fishery."
Mr Brown's other keen interest is history and he has long been the honorary historian for the Australian Underwater Federation.
He has campaigned for both a national and NSW fishing and diving museum while collecting dozens of boxes of memorabilia, including records and equipment dating back to the 1940s.
