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My Book Report
For my book report I chose the Southeast Asia
Tropical Fish Guide, with "over 1,000 photographs of marine
fishes taken in their natural habitat".
Rudie and Helmut went on some excellent diving
adventures in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore,
Thailand and the Andaman Sea.
They took pictures of fishes; lots of pictures of lots
of fishes... Helmut cam back home to Germany and put them in a photo book
with Tetra-Press.
The End.
This recent Guide is an attempt to be both a pet-fish
and diver identification source. Having tried to do both myself; I can
testify, "it's not easy". The effort to combine the two in
purpose reminds me of bikes and motorcycles that are intended for both
on/off road use. Too many compromises and function and enjoyment are
compromised.
My Gripes:
What little text there is touches only barely on issues
of aquarium importance; and it's written in a funky, hard-to-follow
Deutschland non-transliterated language; Gerlish/Engman? Where are the
editorial and translation credits? Perhaps there's none so no one will be
credited/blamed?
HD knows better than what's presented here; he has a
few other good "aquarists texts" to his credit, including the
1984 Armoured Knights of the Sea and the senior authoring of Baensch's
Marine Atlas, Volume 1.
I can't believe this is a Tetra(Press) effort either.
There are many (hundreds) of mis-spelling, syntax, grammatical and other
editorial faults. To top it off, there are no references or citations?
What is this unfinished...?
The butterflyfishes, family Chaetodontidae (p. 174) are
described as "being... comprised of 10 genera and about 120
species". Then in the same paragraph the genus Chaetodon(sic)tidae
is identified with 114 species, Heniochus with eight and the
remaining genera? This doesn't add up!
Some Good:
As grandmothers everywhere are wont to say, "If
you don't have something nice to say (or write), don't write at all".
Okay grandma. There are many great images in this book,
including habitat pix, juvenile/adult pictures of some common and obscure
species, (including all batfish species) & useful insights into
what other people on the planet use for common names. I really like the
German's choices for the two yellow butterflyfishes; calling Forcipiger
flavissimus the long-nose butterfly and F. longirostris the very-long-nose
butterfly.
There are several worthwhile natural history and
collection notes as well. An example is encouraging that some (the larger)
clownfishes collected off their symbiotic anemones (no, they're not
cyanided) be left to repopulate the area.
Take A Sad Song...:
What would I do to improve this book? Much, but it
wouldn't take that much effort. It's a crying shame that someone who knows
and cares about the subject and speaks and reads English didn't
review/edit this book. Ninety nine point nine percent plus of the work is
done; with just a little conscientious re-writing this book's usefulness
and commercial success would be increased ten fold.
Kuiter and Debelius are shown with their underwater
cameras, but how about some notes on underwater photography? As stated in
the Introduction, "The main purpose of this book is to learn about
fishes and encourage those with a camera to keep at the greatest
challenge... photographing fishes." Come on, you guys; follow
through.
Some books are made to be read, others to be used;
unfortunately this one falls short of either possibility.
Fini:
I do encourage serious biotopic marine aquarists and
more-than-casual divers to these areas to peruse this book. The authors
have made a remarkable start at a pictorial catalog of fishes in Southeast
Asia; I concur with their estimates that there are more than 3,000 species
of reef fishes alone in the region. There are many ranges to be extended
and new species of fishes to be described by the intrepid
diver/discoverer... and better books to be written about them.
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