Digital copies of Reef Fish (etc.); practical? Alternatives for lightweight travel fish and creature id?

[lairdb]

What has your experience been on actually using digital copies of the "Humann" (New World Publications; fishid.com) books? We're accustomed to carrying 10 to 15 pounds of their books on trips, but that's increasingly unwieldy.

How practical are the PDFs on an iPad for the post-dive lunchtime log&identify session? Our usual drill is to get the raw photos from the dive onto an iPad, and have it up while madly flipping through the books; is this likely to be a practical workflow for the digital books?

In an older thread, @tursiops remarked...

You can purchase digital copies of all the Reef ID books by Humann and others. Except for the Smithsonian apps for iOS, everything else that is free is either very limited or not very good.

...and @tridacna also said...

I have the electronic editions of Reef Fish ID by Humann and Deloach and a few others. They are horrible to use. Really poor implementation.

...any new entrants, or further thoughts? Thanks.

 

[lairdb]

(In an attempt to contribute as well as bleg, from various threads I have accumulated (but not curated) the following links.)

The Smithsonian apps:

Fishes: East Pacific

An identification guide for the shore-fish fauna of the Tropical Eastern Pacific. This App is the first of a set of 2 portable identification guides for Apple touch-screen devices that will cover the shore-fish faunas of the tropical American marine regions on both sides of the central American...

apps.apple.com

Fishes: East Pacific

An identification guide for the shore-fish fauna of the Tropical Eastern Pacific. This App is the first of a set of 2 portable identification guides for Apple touch-screen devices that will cover the shore-fish faunas of the tropical American marine regions on both sides of the central American...

apps.apple.com

...and sites:

Shorefishes - Homepage

Shorefishes of the Eastern Pacific

biogeodb.stri.si.edu

Shorefishes - Homepage

Fishes of the Greater Caribbean

biogeodb.stri.si.edu

iNaturalist app and site:

iNaturalist

iNaturalist is a social network for sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. The primary goal is to connect people to nature, and the secondary goal is to generate scientifically valuable biodiversity data from these personal encounters. iNaturalist helps you...

apps.apple.com

iNaturalist

iNaturalist is a social network for naturalists! Record your observations of plants and animals, share them with friends and researchers, and learn about the natural world.

www.inaturalist.org

Other sites:

Florent's Guide To The Tropical Reefs - Fish, Creatures and Corals

https://fishbase.se/

Reef Fish Online Identification Guide | Snorkeling Report

www.snorkeling-report.com

Tropical Fish Identification Made Easy - Whats That Fish!

www.whatsthatfish.com

Ryanskiy books and ebooks:

Reef ID Books: photo guides about marine animals – Innovative marine life guides for underwater photographers, snorkelers and marine biologists

reefidbooks.com

 

[d^2b]

This may not be relevant to you, but I refuse to shell out the money for files that are only viewable in Adobe Digital Editions. There are various reasons, but the most practical is that I run linux on my non-mobile devices, and Adobe does not support that. I also don't want to be at the mercy of Adobe for access to materials I paid for.

 

[lairdb]

This may not be relevant to you, but I refuse to shell out the money for files that are only viewable in Adobe Digital Editions. There are various reasons, but the most practical is that I run linux on my non-mobile devices, and Adobe does not support that. I also don't want to be at the mercy of Adobe for access to materials I paid for.

Usually agree; in the cases where I do get them, I always remove the DRM to remove such concerns.

Worse diving through photography

Me too.