This was the response that Simon Gingins gave me at the Australian Museum this week.

This is not to be confused with the National Museum on Acton Peninsula, though you would be excused for doing so.

No, this is the Australian Museum whose main premises are in Sydney. But I am 200 kilometres north of Cairns at the Lizard Island Research Station which was established by the museum in 1973 to better understand the Great Barrier Reef, arguably the largest living thing on earth.

Gingins is a PhD student from Neuchatel University in Switzerland. Landlocked, snow-covered Switzerland, of course, is not known as being at the forefront of tropical marine research. But Gingins is not so much interested in coral reefs and the like, as such, but in co-operation between species. And as it happens Australia's Great Barrier Reef provides one of the world's finest examples of it.

It is the wrasse. Of 60 species of wrasse, a half dozen or so are ''cleaner'' fish. They clean other larger fish.

Anyone who has dived in tropical waters has seen the phenomenon: little fish swimming and munching on the skin of larger fish, even swimming through gills and into and out of the mouths of the larger ''client'' fish.

Now one chomp might see the ''cleaner'' wrasse as a sashimi for the client fish. But the client fish does not do this. It is engaging in a trade-off. It allows the cleaner wrasse to clean off the parasites which have latched on to its body, mainly overnight.

This symbiosis has been well-known for a long time. But Gingins's and other scientists' research have gone a little further.

They have found that the cleaner fish like not only to take parasites but also steal a little of the client fish's mucus as well when the client fish arrive at what are known as the wrasse's ''cleaner stations'' on the reef. The mucus might be important as food, as a medicine or for other reasons for the wrasse. We don't know - yet.

The ''don't know yet'' is an answer which reveals a determination to find out. And that is what I like about good scientists: tenacity, enthusiasm, patience and dispassion - a determination to find the evidence and not to jump to conclusions until it is found.

Gingins wonders why some species of wrasse and why only some individuals among the species of wrasse are cleaner fish.

He has been experimenting with the intelligence and personality of the wrasse species. The wrasse have been quite clever in stealing the client fish's mucus. If they ravage the mucus first, the client fish will shake them off and go away. So the wrasse dutifully eat a lot of parasites first before chomping on the mucus - a bit like a child eating the brussels sprouts before the steak.

On the intelligence front he has done some experiments in the research station's aquarium (which reticulates water from the reef). Two plates are put into a section containing one wrasse. The left plate always has food. The right is blank.

If the fish goes for the wrong plate both plates are withdrawn. The cleaning species learn more quickly than the non-cleaning ones.

Indeed, the phrase Gingings's Fish might have entered the lexicon if Pavlov's Dog had not barked first.

More subtly, Gingings puts plates with several sorts of food on them into the water. As soon as a fish samples any of the food the plate is withdrawn. Most fish go for the most palatable food first. Not so the cleaner wrasse. It realises that it must eat its brussel sprouts before it can get a good feed of fillet steak. It understands that it can get meat and veges, not just meat.

Interestingly enough, this same experiment has been applied to chimpanzees and other primates. They go for the most palatable food first up every time. Some greedy, impetuous humans are like this, too. They either don't learn or take longer to learn the lesson that the humble cleaner wrasse understands: swallow the poor quality and no one notices. It is free. As soon as you try for the big juicy stuff expect all the food supply to be cut off straight away.

Gingins is also studying the difference between the boldness of the cleaner wrasse compared to its non-cleaner cousins. It must take some courage to front a very large fish and swim in its mouth.

Cleaner wrasse will swim up to human hands in an aquarium and even attempt to clean fingernails. Indeed, a cleaner wrasse once tried to clean the wax out of my ear.

All this, of course, is more than idle curiosity. If fish parasites are not controlled in aquaculture, for example, it could be ruinous. More broadly, understanding of the reef will help its preservation and billions of dollars worth of tourism - especially international tourism - and the commercial and recreational fishing industries. And therapeutic drugs could be developed from creatures on the reef.

The importance of the reef to Australia and the threat posed to it by climate change is a reason for Australia to be at the forefront of climate science and to be doing something about climate change.

We are not all cut out to be scientists. Many of us jump to conclusions, allow emotion to take hold, dismiss inconvenient evidence, and have not got the patience to gather the evidence or humility to admit we don't know if the evidence is not in.

Nonetheless, as the number of Australian students studying science decreases, we should at least be doing more to teach the scientific method and the history of science so that Australians have a greater appreciation of its importance.

Let's hope that like the ingenious cleaner wrasse we can use our intelligence and boldness to make the best of our environment.

For more go to:

lizardisland.net.au

crispinhull.com.au