The Ultimate Snorkeling Book [Paperback]

This is the best book on snorkeling I've ever read - it covers all the questions you could have about picking and using your equipment, swimming techniques to navigate around the reef, snorkeling with kids, getting the most out of your snorkeling experience and how to have a lot of fun. One of the best and most unique parts of this book is getting Dr. Burgess's insights on how to observe the reef creatures for the most enjoyment and appreciation of underwater world. He also talks about fish behavior and a wide variety of the creatures you might expect to encounter while snorkeling. Most of all, the book is very entertaining and the emphasis is on having fun!

This is a great book about snorkeling, containing much useful and unique information. I appreciate the jokes and puns especially! This got me much more interested in snorkeling than I had been before, and I plan on following the advice thoroughly. Also, I am not sure why the 1-star reviewer had to be so harsh. It is loaded with practical real-life info on many topics, and while the author can be quirky at times and tell some deadpan jokes and puns ("dead foot disease" is obviously a joke name for athlete's foot or something similar), I don't see why a little humor (bad or not) can't be included in the book to make it more interesting. How-to books are typically boring so I don't see the problem with this. Also the 1-star reviewer is wrong on a few things - regarding mixing sunscreen with water, he says that if you have trouble spreading it on your skin, wet your skin slightly - this method clearly works better and if it caused the sunscreen to not work, the author wouldn't gotten burned and wouldn't have included this advice. The first ingredient in most sunscreens is water obviously, so thinning out a sunscreen with a small amount of more water will allow it to go farther without noticeably reducing efficacy. The companies making this stuff want you to spend $9 on a bottle that will last a few days, not $9 on a bottle that, with a small amount of added water, could last twice as long, otherwise they'd be 1/2 as profitable... He also warns of skin cancer many times throughout the book and says wear long sleeves etc to reduce risk, so again not sure why a random comment about watering down sunscreen is taken out of context.

Also, he says that for buying a mask online, check the return policy and also try it out at home when you get it. Not all of us live within a reasonable distance to a good dive store.

So if the 1-star reviewer hates this book and author so much, try listing some actual errors in the book instead of your personal opinion and misunderstanding of what a joke is. An author's opinion isn't an error, it is just an opinion that they are entitled to, and readers should use common sense and not take everything to heart. If you disagree with the author's inability to find a mask that works with facial hair or his belief in not urinating in the reef, and if you can't pick up on a very dry joke he puts in from time to time, don't automatically condemn the whole book, as it is actually very useful, and I challenge you to find a better book on the subject that covers swimming technique, practical advice on gear, biology, safety, and lists dozens of the author's favorite books and websites on the subject or that carry good gear. Yes it is clearly a low-budget internet publisher book, and he clearly made the illustrations with MS Paint, but this also allows an expert on the subject to share his findings with everyone who searches for 'snorkeling books' on amazon without having to spend years of his life working with a big publisher to make a longer book with less of the author's opinions on what brands/methods work and what don't.

The snorkeling advice itself is fine, but it is too evident that the book is self-published. Some good editing would have made for smoother reading - instead I stopped repeatedly to puzzle over a writing style replete with poor and forced similes.

For example, there is a reference to quartz in the crystal lattice of a diamond (which any premed student should know is made from carbon not quartz). It was unexpected and disappointing to find such an error in a work offered for sale from an author billed as a MD/PhD, and casts doubt on other content in the work.