Book Review:

Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest - A Photographic Encyclopedia of Invertebrates, Seaweeds and Selected Fishes

 by Andy Lamb and Bernard P. Hanby

Hardcover, 398 Pages

Publisher: Harbour, 2005

Purchase Directly from Harbour

Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest is an amazing collection of photographs, cataloguing over 1400 different species of marine life, most of which can be found around Vancouver Island. This book is an essential addition to the libraries of amateur naturalists, teachers, and other outdoor enthusiasts. The depth of marine life covered along with the clarity of images is truly breathtaking.

The book rates a full 5 stars out of 5. Well worth the spend.

Where other books with their lacklustre photos and drawings (making identification difficult) leave the amateur naturalist frustrated , Hanby brings a photographer's eye to the project producing crystal clear images that make identification a breeze. After a day on the reef, my six-year old has been able to identify such diverse creature as purple ribbon worms and black-clawed shore crabs on his own.

The book lacks indepth scientific discussion of the species catalogued, but that is ok since the book's primary use is as a springboard for identifying what you find. Once you have a name, other information is easy to track down.

The other shortcoming of this book is the section devoted to fish. For an extra 20 pages or so (not that much considerng the book is near 400 pages in length), the authors could have created an invaluable resource for fish identification, but instead they opted to include only select random fishes. There are other sources out there, including one by Andy Lamb: Coastal Fishes of the Pacific Northwest, but inclusion of more fishes in this volume would have been most welcome (and probably commercially detrimental to his other book).