Customer Reviews

Dolphins & Porpoises: A Worldwide Guide

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Jean-Pierre Sylvestre has taken great care in writing this book. Every known species of dolphin and propoise is covered, and he includes a wealth of facts about each species. Take care, this isn't a whale watching book, the only whales covered are the killer whale, false killer whale, pygmy killer whale and long and short finned pilot whales.

I was particularly impressed with some of the rare photographs of river dolphins such as the amazon river dolphin, ganges river dolphin and Chinese river dolphins that I have not seen in other books. Of course, he also has spectacular photos of the more common species. The ones without photographs were the Franciscana, Hourglass dolphin, Fraser's dolphin, Chilean dolphin, Burmeister's propoise, Vaquita and Spectacled porpoise all others included at least one photograph.

Included with the description of each species is a world map of their ranges, a pencil sketch of each species (especially useful if there is no photograph), when they were first identified, diet, population, other common names, reproduction information, a sketch of their skulls and interestingly enough sound emission information (frequency range and where the research was done etc...). This is only part of the information included, he's got all the common information about size and field identification too of course.

What I like about the book is that it can easily be used as a browsing book for people with a casual interest if they want to ID a dolphin they've seen, or somone looking for a little more detail.

There is also and excellent introduction to the book which includes general information about all species, the taxonomy, sound production and hearing, fossil record information and much more.

You can't really go wrong with the book. If you like this book, I also suggest Eyewitness Handbooks "Whales Dolphins and Porpoises" by Mark Carwardine which is just as good and covers all of the dolphins and porpoises plus all the whales. That text is a little less technical without the skulls or sound frequency information and is geared more towards whale watchers.