Customer Reviews

Whales, Dolphins, and Other Marine Mammals of the World (Princeton Field Guides)

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There have been a plethora of field guides on marine mammals and most of them, including several recent ones, such as Carwardine's and the Welles', that are quite good. Shirihai and Jarrett's is in a class by itself. However, it is not really intended as a spotting guide for geographic locations. It illustrates and explains the different variations with all the species, has excellent and distinctive photgraphs, wonderful art work of all species and many variants, fine maps, tells of behavioral and diet diffences for various populations of the same species (and hints where there may be new species, or subspecies, to be found). It is the most comprehensive such guide on this, or almost any other, wildlife family and is at a bargain price, even if Amzn.com hasn't yet discounted it. Don't miss this book!

For a long time I have been searching for guides to help identify whales and dolphins in different parts of the world, but until recently there was very little practically-oriented literature available. In the last few years, that has changed and several groundbreaking regional identification guides are now available: for example Whales and Dolphins of the European Atlantic (Ocean Guides) and Whales & Dolphins of the North American Pacific: Including Seals and Other Marine Mammals. So the non-specialist or casual observer is now in with a fighting chance of identifying those dolphins seen on a coastal hike or whales encountered on a ferry crossing.

At the same time, several references on global marine mammals have appeared, of which Shirihai and Jarrett's compact guide is the best of the bunch. Why? First of all, this guide is compact. At under 400 pages, it is small enough to fit into a coat pocket, yet there is enough information to enable the user to identify (potentially) any marine mammal. So this volume is a true field guide. The book covers sirenians (manatees and dugongs), seals, coastal otters and other marine mammals as well as the cetaceans. The text is concise and emphasises key identification features, but there is still room for notes on behaviour and ecology. There are plenty of plates, both photographic and illustrated - all of them of very high quality. It is clear that author and artist have ample field experience have been able, through this book, to put this squarely at the disposal of the user. Finally, the book is printed on high quality glossy paper, which makes it a pleasure to leaf through at home.

So next time I am off on a trip with a chance of encountering whales or dolphins, I will be packing this handy guide in a addition to whatever regional guides I can get my hands on. Meanwhile, I am enjoying some armchair whale-watching as I leaf through the pages back home.

Chris Sharpe, 16 September 2008. ISBN: 0691127573

It's an "ok" book. It would have been a lot better if so many of the photos weren't so small (one is less than half an inch tall and an inch and a half wide!) and the illustrations were better. I thought several of the baleen and beaked whale illustrations were very good, but many of the dolphins were downright ugly (particularly both common dolphins). Shirihai appears to be lazy when it comes to fact-checking. He repeats mistakes he made in earlier works (his 2002 Antarctic guide), stating sei whales "formed the major Antarctic whale catch" from the 1940s to 1960s (really only the second half of the 1960s) or mentions outdated info (e.g. Southern California being a "hotspot" for short-finned pilot whales when they've been rare here since the 1982-83 El Nino). He claims there was once 500,000 blue whales worldwide, a few hundred thousand more than is presently thought.

Despite the above, there are a few good things about this book. It's among the first to give due treatmeant to Longman's and Perrin's beaked whales, even presenting a photo of the former. There's also an excellent photo of a breaching Hecter's beaked whale. That's it really. I still prefer Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises of the eastern North Pacific (Reeves et al. 1982), at least for the North Pacific.

If you like really small photos and half-way decent illustrations, this is the book for you. I suggest buying a used one; it's not quite worth buying new.

I purchased this guide for my husband (a newly-minted whale naturalist with the American Cetacean Society) on the recommendation of one of their instructors. He is very pleased with it. On a practical level, it is water resistant and has beautiful pictures which can be easily shared with folks on the whale-watch boat.