Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide

I have been diving all over the indo-pacific from Hawaii to Thailand and have found this book to be indispensible for identifying both Fish and Invertabrates. If you are going to only buy one book for indo-pacific marine life indentification, then this should be the one. Occasionally, I will see something on a dive that I can't find in this book, but its not very often. The books biggest strength is that it contains pictures and information on a wide variety of marine life, not just fish. Its also divided into various chapters with good brief introductions on the general behaviors and characteristics of each phylum/family -- something many other books don't have.

Very authoritative covering of the animals of the Indo Pacific area. The photos are stunning, and there are a significant number of species listed. This Coral Reef Guide covers: Fishes, crabs, shrimps, invertebrates, coral and other broad subjects. There are scientific names given for use by the marine biologists. For the amateur, however, Golden Guides would be more useful. Once they progress to this advanced guide, they will seek nothing after it. A very nice home reading book for entertainment or admiration. The species shown are incredible, and compell the reader to explore the ocean. Explore this book first of all.

As a diver and aspiring underwater photographer stationed in Okinawa, Japan, I have found that the pictures I take and want to identify are all in this book. It's great if you want to find out what fish/sponge/slug/anenome you took a picture of. Used my dive buddies for long enough, so I'm getting one of my own. Even though a lot of the names are italian, most fish have the common name. Definatly helpful if you're into underwater pics.

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).

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. [email protected]