Seashore Animals of the Southeast

On the whole, Ruppert & Fox have developed a very useful, easy to read field guide. Indeed, this is probably the best general purpose field guide for Southeast marine invertebrates available (it is also far better than the comparable Peterson guides). This guide is perfect for people who are just beginning to explore the marine environment, or for people who do not necessarily need to unequivically identify organisms to the species level. Overall, most hobby-level naturalists will find this an excellent addition to their libraries.That said, however, no field guide is without flaws and this one has several. First, when you attempt to identify organisms, you find that taxa are arranged in a haphazard fashion. In a (poor) attempt to make ID's easy, the authors have forsaken the traditional taxonomic organization of phyla and have ordered them according to general morphological appearance. Second, with the descriptions provided, it is often very difficult to distinguish among con-geners. Finally, the authors have included lots "just so" natural history information. Although this certainly spices up the reading, many of the stories are unfounded. As an example: the authors claim that the Sargassum Sea Slug (Scyllaea pelagica) feeds on the floats of sargassum weed, which then provide the slug with buoyancy. This is not true. The "floats" inside Scyllaea are actually camoflaged hepatic organs.Although these problems don't detract from the general usefulness of the guide, they are distracting, and at times misleading. Overall, though, this is an excellent resource and a must for all Atlantic (USA) marine naturalists.