Japanese Koi Fish

Kate began keeping Koi in 1977 and with Andrew, built their second dedicated Koi pond in 1984. The "state of the art" four-chamber filter of the time (by "Waddy") was still working well when Andrew and Kate finally moved house in 2002. Because of a considerable delay in building the new house and recent events, ‘pond three’ is still on the drawing board.

Kate entered her career as a Koi judge in 1988, qualifying in 1990. In 1991 she became the Judging Standards Committee's (JSC) PRO, in 1995 it's secretary and was elected JSC Chairman in 2000, a post she held for four years. Kate has also been actively involved with the Trainee Judge Seminars for many years.

In 1995 Kate joined Zen Nippon Airinkai (ZNA), and became a ZNA candidate judge and in 2001 became only the 2nd person in the UK to become accepted as a ZNA locally certified judge. She has judged internationally for some years.

As well as judging, Kate has contributed to the hobby by giving many talks on aspects of appreciation and classification to BKKS sections and other Koi clubs, both at home and abroad. She has also published a very large number of articles on Koi classification and appreciation in various magazines, as well as producing her first book “Koi Appreciation – the first step” which, illustrated with 250 of Andrew’s superb photographs, was published in October 2001.

In “real life”, Kate is a Lead Biomedical Scientist, running the newly formed single service Immunology Department for County Durham, based at University Hospital North Durham.