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Coral Reef Guide to the Red Sea by Robert Myers and Ewan Lieske
Coral Reef Guide to the Red Sea by Robert Myers and Ewan Lieske
I am not an ichthyologist, but I have friends who are. One recently told me that the fish ID book I had been using as a bible was full of mistakes. How was I to know?
The latest Collins Coral Reef Guide to The Red Sea is probably not full of mistakes. I took it on a Red Sea trip and placed it in the saloon of the liveaboard. It soon became the reference of choice for divers.
Unlike previous such Collins guides, this one is illustrated with photographs and as such reflects what we actually see. There are still the scientific illustrations where they are deemed appropriate, but we all thought it was easy to spot our intended quarry within its 384 pages.
The book is all-encompassing in that it attempts to include every aspect of life from the most magnificent mammal to the humblest algae.
Its photographs are accompanied by a suitably terse commentary that covers such things as the Latin name, a description for those still unsure after looking at the photograph, and the biology and habitat of the subject.
There are also more complex general descriptions at the start of each section, which are categorised in the way of tilefishes, snappers, sweetlips and grunts and the like. I even found the elusive (in ID books) cobia lurking next to remoras. If you've ever been harassed by one, you'd want to know what it was, too!
During that week we found everything we sought, including a description of what I now know to be called a Sailor's Eyeball, an algae that forms a silvery bubble that looks like a blob of mercury on the seabed, and the correct spelling of 'anthiases'. I even found a charming picture of a dugong, though I failed to locate the real thing.
The only apparent failure of the book was the absence of those fish we call flagtails, a huge close-knit school of which can be found at the southern end of Daedelus Reef. They could be a juvenile form of something else - perhaps a passing ichthyologist can enlighten me.
This book is likely to become standard issue on Red Sea liveaboards and in dive centres. It even comes with a waterproof plastic cover, so the publishers must know what a messy lot divers are.
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Coral Reef Guide to the Red Sea by Robert Myers and Ewan Lieske (Collins, ISBN 0007159862). Softback, 384 pages, £19.99
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