After many years as a hobbyist and shop owner, David began working in 1997 as the quarantine and water quality aquarist for Two Oceans Aquarium in South Africa. In fact, he was the first South African to successfully train Oceanic Sunfishes (Mola mola) with mammal training techniques and designed a special gel-based diet for them as well as controlling their Sunfish rehabilitation facility.
In 2002 he was requested to help design and run all aspects of quarantine for the new uShaka Marine World in Durban, South Africa, under the control of the South African Association for Marine Biological Research Organization. He and other highly respected scientific individuals were then tasked with quarantining all the exhibit animals at the old Sea World public aquarium and moving them to their new home at uShaka Marine World.
David is now the head of the largest quarantine facility for fishes in the Southern Hemisphere! He is the Senior Aquarist for all aspects of Quarantine at uShaka Marine World Aquarium, the fifth largest public aquarium in the world. He also contributed to the Sixth International Symposium on Fish Parasites in September 2002 with a combined poster/paper on monogeneans in Elephant fishes off South Africa (Callorhinchus capensis) with Dr. Kevin Christison of the University of the Western Cape.
He also wrote the Quarantine protocol manual for the Two Oceans Aquarium, which has been largely adopted by many aquarists throughout Australia. And he continues to contribute disease photographs to various magazines and grow his fish parasite photographic archive, which is used as an educational tool in training quarantine aquarists.
Presently, he is working on manipulating parasite life-cycles to aid in treatment regiment success in public aquaria. He has also designed experimental internal treatment procedures for fishes with internal protozoan parasites under anesthesia, a world first.