Customer Reviews

Coral Reef Fishes: Indo-Pacific and Caribbean

5 star:		(5)
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3 star:		(2)
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An amazingly well done flied guide useful for even advanced fish enthusiasts and scuba divers. I have used this book on dive trips to the Egyptian red sea, the sea of Cortez in Mexico and to Cuba, as well as while walking trough several aquariums in the US, and I have hardly ever failed to find a tropical fish species I observed in this book. The illustrations are well done and include juveniles, sex differences and regional color variants. In addition to the geographic range of a species, the likely occurrence on the reef (lagoon, outward reef, sand ...), the depth ranges and information about fish behavior are indicated. I have found this additional information extremely useful, especially when trying to identify one of several similar species.

The book is divided into a Indopacific and a Carribean part, and in addition to the species descriptions there is a short general introduction to corral reefs and fish biology.

this one is a real must. if I had to choose a single fish ID book to bring along in a dive trip, this handy book would be the one. it is probably more usefull for indo-pacific fishes but also atlantic/caribbean fishes part is pretty good. i guess it is the most complete book on fish identification i ever bought.

This guide has the merit to include a really big number of reef fishes species, but I discovered that many fishes have different colors in the field, often too much different than in the illustrations of the book ... The guide can be valid when you can take pictures in water and then, calmly at home, you can looking for features highlighted in the book, often little evident in field.

I bought this book since I am a volunteer at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia. This book is a tremendous resouce especially in the Tropical Diver Exhibit which has many species of tropical fish. It is helpful in identification and lists the fish by scientific as well as common names. I would highly recommend this guide for fish identification, and many of the volunteers use this guide as their resource as well.

I bought the book because i need the names of the fishes in the caribbean, where i dive now, and i thinks that it is a very nice book, very usefull and with a low price.

So I was a bit disappointed that this book contains no photographs, but only drawings. The problem being that some of the fishes we saw in Hawai'i and French Polynesia are really hard to find in the book due to different colors in the wild compared to the drawings.
Also, the names seems somewhat funny. Take for example the Hawai'ian reef triggerfish (Humuhumu-Nukunuku-Apua'a) which is called wedge picassofish in the book. Maybe that is the correct name, but I have always seen it called reef triggerfish everywhere else.
Also, you really have to know your Ocean areas if you want to understand the very compact and cryptically abbreviated range descriptions for each fish.

This is the best guide for fishes of the Indian Ocean and this is my second edition. It is especially useful for aquarium keepers of marine fish since there are hints about what the fish eat and in some cases their suitability in a reef aquarium. Also in the case of wrasses, the pattern changes from juvenile to adult are very clearly shown and again useful for identification. The illustrations are high quality and the line references to distinctive identifying markings are very helpful.

Again it would be very nice to be able to share our experiences with other marine aquarium enthusiasts.

Thank you, John
Asha Cottage, Diani, Kenya