Fishes of the Open Ocean: A Natural History and Illustrated Guide [Hardcover]

This book is superlative. Lavishly illustrated, with a learned text, this work introduces and describes the fish of the open ocean. It belongs equally on the desktop and the coffee table, or a one's arm as re-watching _The Blue Planet_.

Of particular note is the book's treatment of billfish (30 pages) and tunas (40 pages), which have pride of place in the whole work. Pepperell covers pelagic sharks, jacks, and trevallies in depth--I especially enjoyed his writeup of lamnid sharks--but he clearly loves the bluefin and the marlin, the swordfish and the yellowfin, the skipjack and the sailfish, most of all. Indeed, his volume may be the fullest treatment of these fishes in a generally available English-language book.

Four chapters that introduce the book and cover the presentation and our relationship with fish, lead the reader to survey about 160 selected species of open ocean fish, of no fixed abode, engaged in journeys between the continental shelves or dispersed over a significant area of sea. The author takes care in explaining how and why he has chosen the fish he has, and roughly in what order they appear in the book. Each fish is typically depicted in colour by artist Harvey, with maps, photographs and full-page artwork resulting in a lavish reference. We see side profiles for most of the fish though others such as the basking shark are depicted less flatly. The side of views for hammerhead sharks does them a disservice though Tuna and Billfish get some superb illustrations. Seven chapters partition the fish into groups such as billfish, tuna, jacks and sharks with a miscellaneous assortment at the end that includes remoras, oilfish, sunfish and fanfish that may be unfamiliar.

A more consistent taxonomic treatment would have been preferable with a summary of facts for each of the main fish covering their body length and weight. For example, the butterfly tuna is probably a basal group to other tunafish, but appears in the middle of the section dealing with the true tuna the thunini and other forms such as bonitos. To place the sharks as a group between a spectrum of bony fish is also questionable - the taxonomic series does not follow a particularly logical pattern. We do have to wade through quite a bit of text for each fish to find out its size and weight, when a short summary besides each distribution map could have helped. Overall, some kind of fish classification with all the cast of fish shown as an appendix could have helped tremendously.

Most billfish and the fourteen true tuna fish are covered with a fifth of the selection representing the Scombridae and its subgroups in a spectrum that encompasses some thirty-nine families of fish across fourteen orders. Sizes of fish, especially from sport fishing records are given with more attention to weight rather than length. The length of the Bluefin tuna does not seem to be stated categorically given a record for one individual which was apparently 30 feet long. The descriptions highlight key species aspects rather than being encyclopaedic. Conservation issues are dealt with relatively impartially and Pepperell dwells on recent studies (such as tagging) indicating our levels of scientific and aesthetic ignorance of what often amounts to anonymous sources of food. E.g., Annual catches of Skipjack tuna along with "bycatch" have risen to c.2.4 million tonnes, "a trend which is of considerable concern" and several species like Rainbow runners are not just strikingly colourful, but change colour rapidly when alive, which is not how we are likely to encounter them.

More could have been said about overfishing and solutions apart from game fishing and tagging research. As a tribute to oceanic predatory behemoths and food fish, this book augers well for education, research, and conservation incorporating recreational aspects such as (increasingly) non lethal sport fishing, fish watching and diving. Encore.

My kids love this book and the price found on amazon was very reasonable compared to other retailers. The pictures are amazing and it is very educational.