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Product Description
Synopsis
This title is for the scuba diver, fisherman and marine enthusiast, with over 1000 colour photographs of coral reef animals taken in their natural habitat.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
For a fresh amateur SCUBA diver the variety of fish life in the Indian Ocean is all but numbing the senses. But soon enough you see there is some logic to the Darwinian evolutionary madness, and you want to know what all those fish really are - that's when you start looking for field guides. Having bought, and quickly forgotten, several I finally found this one, which has since stayed a true and trusted travel companion to Thailand and the Maldives.
Debelius Indian Ocean Reef Guide (and indeed its sibling covering the Red Sea) has several real strengths and no significant drawbacks - except perhaps weight, 0.9 kg is just more than marginal if you want to travel light.
The choice of species included is accurate - unlike some other guides, you have a good chance of finding what you are looking for. Most of the species are fish (including sharks and rays), but also arthropods (shrimps, lobsters), molluscs, flatworms, corals, sea stars, sea urchins, reptiles and a few mammals are covered to a degree, though far from fully. Naturally they are all sorted according to families and species. All in all something like 800 - 900 species.
The photos are crisp and clear, portraying the specimens in a way so you can recognize them. A small number of photos are full page, but the majority are appr 9X6 cm (there are three descriptions to a page) with a few additional smaller ones illustrating varieties.
The descriptions are generelly brief, of course, but well written. Scientific names are always included.
Spread through the book are also almost 20 "picture stories", 1 - 4 pages each on subjects such as "Chagos", "Whales off Sri Lanka" and "Sex on the reef".
The book is structured according to scientific classification. The table of contents is clear, using colours to visually delineate similar groups - even if this makes parts of the table somewhat hard to read.
At the end are two alphabetic indices, one for scientific names and one for common names, and here is my one real source of gripe about the book. The indices are set in a very small and condensed type face, making them really hard to read unless you have perfect eye sight. The index on common names is not as complete as it should be, listing only the exact name but not parts or permutations of it (e.g. "Crocodile needlefish", but never "needlefish"; "Common cleaner wrasse", but not "cleaner wrasse" which you would probably be searching for). Also, common names are not so common as one might think - several fish are known under two, some even three, english "common" names in the world - Debelius only ever lists one.
To sum it up: weight and indices are very minor drawbacks, I simply will not leave this guide at home when heading for tropical diving!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
As a newcomer to tropical diving I was looking for one book to tell me what I was looking at much as a bird book tells you what the birds are. This book goes a lot further giving information about geographical location, habitats, depths where the fish can be found, sizes, ages and everything you could want to know. It only has one major drawback, it isn't waterproof ! I'd love to be able to take this with me when I'm diving so I could recognise fish when I'm looking at them. Strongly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Like all of the books in this series, this is a great reference guide and has already been well used by my whole family who are (rather geekily) keen to identify everything they find underwater. It is packed with excellent photographs as well as clear descriptions that really help while trying to identify similar species and varieties of underwater fauna and flora. There are also a number of interesting and informative essays on related subjects. We would not go on our SCUBA holidays without packing these reference guides; they have been a great source of information.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Off to Mauritius :)
Was looking for an informative book to bring with me to Mauritius for snorkeling. It remains to see if it represent all the fishes we're hoping to see. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Heidi Gabrielsen
Superb reference book
I bought this book as I was going to the Maldives for a holiday which was going to involve a lot of snorkelling. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. M. Ward
Listmania!
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