Indo/Pacific Critter Guides - Recommendations?

[pamelad]

Hi everyone,

I've been doing a lot of night dives lately, and am loving the variety of invertebrates. However, my reef guide (Coral Sea) is pretty heavily focused on fish, and only has one or two examples each of octopus, nudis, crabs, etc. Does anyone have a recommendation of a guide that's strong on the critters, rather than fish? One w info on habitats and habits and related details, as well as non-scientific names and good photos, would be great.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Wisnu]

Crustacea Guide Of The World by Helmut Debelius
Indo-Pacific Nudibranchs and Sea Slugs by Terrence Gosliner, David Behrens and Angel Valdes

 

[Manuel Sam]

That whole series of harcover books that includes Bob Halstead's "Coral Sea Reef Guide" that you currently own is excellent.

Within that series, Helmut Debelius has the Crustacea book suggested by Wisnu, and he also has a Nudibranch book; and then there is a Cephalopods book by Mark Norman. If you buy them all, it gets pretty expensive at around $40 US or more apiece. Plus, if you're traveling, that's quite a load to carry on your trips.

I know of two other books (and there are probably a few more) that you might want to look into that might be a bit more "all-in-one" and which might have more than a a couple of examples. Neither will fully meet your requirements but....

"Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide" by Allen and Steene, has decent photography, non-scientific names, is a good book to travel with, but lacks habitat and habits details and is far from being complete: to fit everything into one book is beyond expectations, I think.

"Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific" by Gosliner, Behrens and Williams, also has decent photography, is more complete (has more examples), has habitat and distribution info, doesn't have fish, can be traveled with, but uses mostly scientific names.

I wonder if Humann has one in the works.

Good luck.

 

[pamelad]

Great - thanks to both! I picked up the crustacea and coral reef guides for now. I'll bring along my coral sea guide for travel, but since I'm currently just diving at home, don't mind the bulk of the many books.
Thx again!