Customer Reviews

Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Finding a comprehensive fish identification book for the South Pacific is surprisingly difficult. This volume is one of the most popular and widely available choices, but buyers should be forewarned.

The volume covers a very wide-range of topics, from the invertebrates to the fishes, giving the appearance of a thorough and comprehensive guide. Unfortunately both the text and the photos do little more than scratch the surface. Each family is covered with just a single page of text. Each fish is covered with just a photo and label identifying it, without any discussion of the species behavior, identifying marks, or similar species. Worst of all, in my limited South Pacific diving experience I've encountered many species that are not included in this book at all. I suspect it probably includes no more than 75% of the commonly encountered coral reef fishes, not enough to be an authoritative source for fish identification. The section on sea turtles includes photos of just two species, plus a drawing of all six species without any labels to tell you which is which. All in all, an attractively packaged but unfinished effort.

Over many years, I have looked for a good guide to reef fauna. Last year, I settled for this one and probably won't look further.

This one is very good for identifying everything from sponges to turtles. Each type of creature (usually a phylum or an order) is organized into its own chapter, which begins with a couple of pages of general facts that generally cover reproduction, feeding, and interesting characteristics. Then come the pages of very good color photos of each variation (there are over 20 different clownfishes identified... not bad!) These are labeled with their common name and their Latin name.

But unlike Margaret Gremli's Marine Life in the South China Sea (albeit a less complete and orderly field guide), Allen and Steene's book does not offer any interesting tidbits of information NEXT TO the creature's photo. Each entry is just a name, sometimes with a height in centimeters. In other words, it's great for getting the exact name of the fish you just spotted forty feet down, and your dive log will gain some cred, but you won't immediately find any descriptive text or amusing information about that fish in its entry. Don't get me wrong, this is a great field guide, and it took me 10 years to find this. But some divers may prefer the "hey, did you know...?" format of Gremli's book (ISBN 9 789624 215427, published by APA Publications (H.K.) Ltd).

...BR>This book is intended to be used to identify marine organisms by comparing photographs with the live specimens seen or photographed while diving or snorkeling. Although a paperback it is quite a strong book and withstands extensive handling quite well without falling apart. It has helped me to identify most of the marine organisms I encountered in the waters around Bali. A zoologist by training I am not only interested in fishes, but also in all kinds of invertebrate organisms, such as soft and hard corals, nudibranchs, tunicates, echinoderms, worms, molluscs, etc. I therefore noted with particularly pleasure that these are very well represented. For instance, when for the first time you see what looks like white strings on corals or rocks you wonder what the heck that could be. The book informs you that these are spaghetti worms! Ever heard of them? In my experience photographs are more suitable than drawings for finding a resemblance between picture and live specimens. And whereas I realize that it is not easy to photograph fishes, especially not the shy species, I wished a few times the pictures to bear a closer resemblance to the real specimens. It would be to the book's advantage if improved photographs were included when a new edition is prepared. At present, however, there is no alternative to this book.

As a professional diver guiding diving expeditions in Indoensia for 4 years I needed the best resources at my disposal. This by far was the one single best publication that I could find for general reef-species identification. Of course there are other better fish books out there, but this is not a book just on fish. This is a book that covers the entire spectrum of what you might find on the reef from algae to hammerheads. So if you are traveling and only want to carry one book, even if you are able to carry a library, I highly recomend this one. Jason@diveindonesia.com

This book is as good as it gets. Which does not say much. I took it on a recent dive trip to SE Asia and was able to determine generally what I was seeing. The photos are good. However, there are insufficient descriptions - nothing on habitat and nothing to differentiate juveniles from adults - to ID species. And there were lots of animals underwater that were not listed. But the other available texts were no better.

I searched for months of find a good fish ID book. I concluded there's just nothing out there. So while this is as good as it gets, that's not a lofty endorsement.

I agree with Jason's review. I just returned a few weeks ago from a liveaboard to Papua New Guinea. This was the book of choice by all divers aboard. Sure it doesn't have everything. The one thing I would have liked more of were common names. If you're only taking one book-this is the one.

I find this book to be very helpful when trying to locate a species of coral, shell, animal etc., It is perfect for traveling. If you need more information than the brief discriptions supplied then you will need to research in other publications.

I bought this book a long time ago, and while I still find it occasionally useful, I must also add it is quite superficial - many Indo-Pacific species are illustrated, but the accompanying texts are minimal, outdated or simply non-existent. To put it simply, it has been superseded by several newer titles devoted to the same area. Divers, underwater photographers and reef aquarium keepers should consider instead the more recent, complete, updated and infinitely better illustrated Reef Fish Identification - Tropical Pacific by Gerry Allen, A Diver's Guide to Reef Life by Andrea and Antonella Ferrari and A Diver's Guide to Underwater Malaysia Macrolife by Andrea and Antonella Ferrari - the latter, despite its limiting title, representing in my opinion the final word on Indo-Pacific critters, at least for the time being.

This is the most comprehensive book we have seen, including fish, coral, underseas creatures and even birds and turtles! The pictures are excellent, but there is little description of the fish's habitats and behaviours, although MANY, MANY fish are covered! A thorough reference and one we'll use often when we are trying to identify what we took photos of!

A number of reviews criticize this book for its lack of depth. Hello, it's a field guide. It's a single book on all kinds of Indo-Pacific marine life in and around coral reefs--everything from algae to sea turtles. So this is the compact reference we bring with us on Indo-Pacific dive trips. We have most of the other books mentioned in other reviews, and we use them a lot when we're back home poring over our photos. For example, "Coral Reef Animals of the Indo Pacific" is great but it's only for invertebrates, while this book covers everything.

One other advantage of this book is that it only contains common critters. Odds are what you saw is common, so we use this book first and only go to our others if by some chance what we saw wasn't common.

I haven't seen one other all-purpose guide mentioned in other reviews. It may be better than this but it has one drawback from my point of view: it includes Red Sea and Caribbean critters. I want to pack one field guide, and I want it to be region-specific. Caribbean biotopes in particular are so different from the Indo-Pacific region that such a guide is necessarily going to be cluttered with stuff that's irrelevant to an Indo-Pacific trip.

The airlines are getting more and more restrictive about luggage, and the internal carriers (such as Merpati within Indonesia) are worse. I used to bring half a dozen underwater guides. Now I just bring this one, and so I need it to cover everything I see--not just fish--but nothing from elsewhere--such as the Caribbean.

It's great to see shots of juvenile and male/female fish, which you get with more detailed/heavy/specialized guides. We have such books at home. For our hotel room or liveaboard cabin, though, this one will do, and do nicely.