Reef Life: A Guide to Tropical Marine Life

Very Worthwhile book, well organized, with deep information. A great education after a few snorkels or dives to see just what that was...It's priced fairly and I look forward to spending time. Not a glamorous coffee table book per say-it's kind of modest and down to earth, but that's what I like about it.Highly recommended.

This book has everything you want to know about reef fish. The size is nice so you can travel with it for fish identification.

Beautiful pictures and very informative. Great reference for diving or budding marine biologists.

THE GOOD: This is a very good read if you want a fairly sophisticated overview of reef ecology as well as an extraordinarily broad survey of the variety of tropical marine creatures (fish, reptiles, mammals, and invertebrates), plus reef locations around the world. So it would be a good choice for someone deciding where to travel for a snorkeling/diving vacation and who wants to learn about what he might see there, for example. The photos are outstanding (the photographer is actually listed as the principal author of the book even though a different individual wrote the text), and there is fairly in-depth information about individual species you might see. I'm not aware of a similar book that covers the full range of tropical marine life (both vertebrates and invertebrates) seen globally as well as giving information about all the reef locations around the world.THE NOT SO GOOD:– It is fairly heavy and, in my opinion, not going to be worth taking along on a vacation to ID marine creatures. The reason is that it is global in scope and necessarily limited in terms of the number of species included, so it is not going to include a lot of the species you are likely to see at a specific location and will include many species you would have no chance of seeing at that location. You would be much better off getting a guide more limited in scope to the area you are visiting. (Unfortunately there is no Kindle edition of this book.)– The organization and index are somewhat chaotic and not conducive to finding a specific species. The species accounts of Ray-finned fishes are grouped by family, but there is no discussion of the characteristics of the families, nor any explanation of the bizarre ordering of the families. The first fish listed is Tarpon, and the next family treated is moray eels! So the families are certainly not grouped by relatedness. The index is also a mess. If you want to find the species accounts of triggerfishes, for example, there is no entry under "t"-- you have to know the scientific name of the triggerfish family to find them in the index. Either that, or know the common name of the fish used in the book, e.g. clown triggerfish, which is listed in the index under "c!" And if what you know is the scientific name of the species, you can't find that in the index either since genus and species names aren't listed.– The text often uses technical terms either before or without explaining them, e.g. gorgonian, but the book has no glossary and even the index has no entry for the term.– The book contains a few strange errors. For example, it claims "Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the world's second-largest island." That statement is nonsensical – Papua New Guinea isn't even an island! It is a country that constitutes the eastern half of the island of New Guinea – it is New Guinea that is the world's second largest island.– The species accounts contain a lot of useful detail, but are strangely inconsistent. For example, it describes how dangerous most sharks are to divers, but strangely omits any reference to this when discussing one of the most dangerous sharks – the Tiger Shark. It also usefully includes insets showing the dramatically different juvenile forms of some angelfish, but omits those for other angelfish – even the French Angelfish, which is a common aquarium fish for which photos of juveniles should be easy to obtain.

This book has great photos and write-ups on plenty of species. I would highly recommend to divers/snorkelers or armchair adventurers who want to explore the beautiful diversity of life found in the coral reefs of the world.

Beautiful book. So much information

Eager to read it, but print size slows me down and the book dimensions are awkward to hold it. Sqypuare but very thick.

I got this book to identify the fish i would see on my trip to the caribbean, not only is it a good field guide,it also contains a ton of information about coral reefs and the animals that live in them as well as tons of beautiful pictures.