Alex Ploeg is dead

The internationally acknowledged ornamental fish expert and general secretary of the Ornamental Fish Industry (OFI), Alex Ploeg, is dead. It has been learned that Ploeg and his wife Edith and son Robert were on the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, flight MH17, which crashed in Ukraine on 17 July. The family's two daughters, Mirjam and Sandra, were not on board the doomed jet.In Ploeg the aquatics industry has lost one of its visionaries and pioneers. Alex Ploeg started out in 1991 as a fish breeder in the Netherlands Antilles and began selling ornamental fish in 1993. He had been a member of the OFI since 1994 and joined its board in 2002. His appointment to general secretary came on 1 April 2004.