October 2012    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 27, No. 10   What's this?

Reef Fish of the East Indies

and the recent controversy caused by a photo of the authors

from the October, 2012 issue of Undercurrent  

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With a list price of $250 and a weight of 14 pounds, this will probably be the most expensive piece of literature you've ever bought - but the price and the poundage is worth it to add Reef Fish of the East Indies, a three-volume set, to your library (it's available for sale at the "Books" tab of www.undercurrent.org ).

Renowned marine biologists Gerald R. Allen and Mark V. Erdman have combined 60 years of surveys, fieldwork and research to create the most definitive guide of the Coral Triangle to date, perhaps forever. The 1,292 pages of text and 3,600 photographs (40 percent of which are of fish not seen before in print) gives comprehensive information on every known reef fish species from a region known as the global epicenter of marine biodiversity.

Volume 1 includes descriptions of the regions that make up the East Indies, along with a discussion of the geographic distribution of area's species. The other two volumes are devoted to the 120 fish families, with up-to-date classification, habitat, and distributional range of each relative. You'll get a concise description of each of the 2,631 currently known reef species from the region (25 of which are new ones recently discovered by Allen and Erdman), which are then broken down into variances between and within species to differentiate between sexes, life stages and regional-specific color patterns. You want details; you got 'em. All three hardbound volumes come packed together in a slipcase....