"World Atlas of Marine Fauna" - First Impressions

First thought that came to mind when I first saw it on Friday during ADEX. That is a HUGE whopper of a book! Next thought after getting a copy from Ivan to do a review... This is a freakingly heavy book!

According to Amazon, this book weighs 7 pounds (approx. 3.2kg)! For a single book! o.0 Definitely worked out my arms getting this volume home!
From the weight alone, it does give a "reference book" kinda feel, and the impression that it's no featherweight like those handy field guides that are more commonplace.

Opening the cover reveals a world map with red dots indicating selected photo locations used in the book. What's thrilling to me is that SINGAPORE has a red dot on it! Now I have to go through every 725 pages looking for the photos taken here XD

With the marine animals being organized by Phylum (and depending on the organism, sometimes Class/Order/Family), it does give the layman an insight to the taxonomic relationship between the animals. Nice systematic way of putting things. In spite of the book's title being "World Atlas of Marine Fauna", it's skewed towards the non-sessile aka mobile animal groups. The sessiles such as bryzoans, sponges, and cnidarians (refers to a large number of organisms such as soft and hard corals, jellyfish, anemones, hydroids, sea fans etc.) are covered VERY briefly in the introduction and not elaborated on. Do wish that there would be a separate volume on them too! Just like the companion volume "World Atlas of Marine Fishes." Being a single volume reference book targeted at non-experts/non-scientists, it does make sense to cover the more attractive (at least to the run-of-the-mill diver/snorkeler) marine animals.

Would probably only have the opportunity to do a more thorough reading of this World Atlas over the weekend....

Click for the rambling...

FREE - SciAmEarth 3.0 issue

It really seems to be the season for giving. Other than the Project Seahorse free ID e-book, Scientific American is offering their Earth 3.0 special issue for free download ^_^ Catch is that you are only allowed one download per email address. But then again, how many times would YOU need to DL it? Brilliant idea to guard against hotlinking! The file size is 25.7 MB (97 pages), which might be a bit taxing on those who have a slower connection.... From the content page, it sure looks like a promising read!

Listing of contents/main articles:
(1) COVER STORY: ENERGY Can Nuclear Energy Compete? by Matthew L. Wald
New reactor designs could reduce global warming and fossil-fuel dependence, but utilities are grappling with whether better nukes make more market sense.

(2) ENVIRONMENT China's Energy Paradox by David Biello
A firsthand look at how China's relentlessly expanding use of dirty coal may offset its equally forceful push for cleaner cities and renewable power.

(3) NATIONAL AFFAIRS The Need to Lead in Clean Tech - A conversation with Thomas L. Friedman by Steve Mirsky
The best selling journalist discusses why national security and economics, not just environmentalism, should drive the U.S. to get green aggressively.

(4) URBAN PLANNING Chicago Goes Green by Josh Boak
Can the legendary gritty Windy City really remake itself into a model of sustainable urban living?

(5) CLIMATE STRATEGIES Carbon Cowboys by Ashley Ahearn
Ranchers in Montana get paid by polluters to let the grass grow.

(6) BIODIVERSITY Sharking Guadalupe by Jim Cornfield
Ecotourism has become the unlikely protector of an unexpected endangered species: the great white shark.

(7) HABITAT Regrowing Borneo, Tree by Tree by Jane Braxton Little
To save orangutans, biologist Willie Smits is restoring a rain forest - and creating new livelihoods for the Indonesian families who help him.

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New Seahorse ID book available!!

Project Seahorse and TRAFFIC North America have come up with an e-book on seahorse identification. Kudos to I-NSC for the heads up ^_^

"The new guide is being distributed to Customs agents around the world to help them implement the new listing of seahorses on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It is also available here as a single PDF file."
It's a free e-book so do head over to DiveBooks.Net download your own copy too ^_^ Our local species Hippocampus comes and H.kuda are also inside, so this is definitely yet another valuable resource for guides and would-be-guides to have! dj here is all tuckered out after a relatively packed week of intertidal and underwater activities, so the book review would hafta wait until next week. Do stay tuned and get your own copy now!

EDIT: Seems like there's a bit of unwarranted direct linking to the download (without directing net traffic to the I-NSC website, so the "product page" has been taken off for now. Netizens can't seem to read in detail.... In the meantime, while waiting for the I-NSC mirror to be up again, here's the original distributor, Project Seahorse.

EDIT2: The I-NSC link on Divebooks.net is up again ^_^ Thanks once again to Ivan!!

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ReefAlert 2008 training (part02)

So with 2 days of training under their belts, the SMUX divers still weren't scared off by us, and continued to come back for more punishment the evening classes we had last night and today. Last night sessions saw us completing ID training, with the fish survey. The "module" that took away all my marks when we had our RF training and test last year. moggi can be kinda a nag at times but he does go through the fish survey methodology in detail and shares all his little stories with us too! First on the importance of fish in the coral reef ecosystem, that fish and coral are inter-dependent on each other. Then some tricky things about fish surveys. You need to be able to estimate 3D distances, then those little buggers keep moving (not to mention hide in cracks and crevices)... and to top it all off, you need to be able to estimate a numbers in one huge school as it swims across the survey "corridor"! (yesh, I know I'm supposed to be juan-fish, do like fish both in the sea and on my platter, but I don't really appreciate the finer points of actually doing a fish survey... *bleah* And to further complicate matters, only certain fish are supposed to be counted. So in that short period of time that you detect a fish, you need to (1) ID it, (2) count the numbers, (3) judge if it falls within the survey area, (4) look into hidey-holes for more fishies, and (5) still follow the methodology of waiting for 3-5min every 5m, swimming/trudge the 5m taking at least 30 seconds... All underwater where your reactions tend to be a bit slower already... Talk about multi-tasking and challenging! So of course, you would need to do more detailed readings. These are all great fish reference books to help. The Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide is more of a general introduction to all sorts of marine life. The Reef Fish Identification - Tropical Pacific is spendidly detailed, with the fish categorised according to where they are normally found (bottom dwelling, pelagic, etc.) and their overall typical bodyshape. My favorite of the lot! Reef Fish in a pocket is basically a super condensed version of the Fish ID book, and is actually waterproof so you can keep it in your pocket for quick reference when you go diving/snorkelling! Don't like the Marine Fishes book at the far end of the table as it only contains drawings of the fish (no photos), plus "groupers" are spelled as "gropers" (can't imagine those grumpy looking little fishies turning ecchi and molesting divers/snorkellers....). Just goes to show how common names can be troublesome when there's no standardization... Armed with the books, our insipid students were assigned groups to find out differences between snappers-emperors, groupers-sweetlips, rabbitfish-goatfish, butterflyfish-angelfish, and parrotfish-filefish... Of course, with a little help from moggi, our resident fish expert ^^ Realising that the obvious traits (except for the usual exceptions) are easy to remember, though not always easy to spot, everybody's all smiles. ^_^ We're almost there, guys! So today, after a re-cap of the different surveys we need to carry out for RC, it's exam time! And we're glad to say that everybody passed and we're all set for the actual thing at Dayang!

Click for the rambling...

Review: Nudi books

Being the nudist (meaning 'seaslug lover' NOT 'exhibitionist'!!) I am, I am a *somewhat abashed* owner of THREE nudibranch books!! (amongst other nature books) And for those of you who know how much they cost and how I tend to build my own personal library of sorts, you probably can "value" my really messy room. ^^ The latest addition being the Nudibranch Encyclopedia by Neville Coleman. Having a spot of free-ish time now (before the April-June) madness busy-ness descends, so shall do a quick and rough comparison between (and a somewhat review of)Coleman's latest and his previous 1001 Nudibranchs book. The covers look pretty much the same but the first difference is in the thickness and weight. 1001's a mere 144 pages and soft cover, whereas NE's nearly 4 times that at 416 pages and hard cover. A tad bit hefty for a field guide, especially when your dive gear already takes up so much space and weight (not to mention your cameras and other assorted barang-barangs). Plus, most divers are more of generalists than nudists per se, meaning if they wanna bring along their ID books, it would be for quite a few critters... So the new kid book on the block suffers the first blow of being less portable, but how does it do content-wise?

Firstly, the section describing the main features of the different seaslugs now has labeled photographs instead of diagrams to indicate the names of the different anatomical portions of the sluggers. Much less detail as compared to 1001 that even includes the type of cerata. Guess quite a few of the features are difficult to see in the field, and the general audience wouldn't be so concerned with knowing where the seminal groove is or how the abulmen gland is wrapped round the digestive gland.

Not much changes were made to the section on habitats, well, except that in NE, the portion on open ocean opisthobranchs is omitted, and even the part on zoogeography was taken out. And on the other hand, the portion(s) on nudibranch behavior has been expounded upon. More details and insights into the 5 senses of opistobranchs, respiration, locomotion, defence strategies, and the topic we all love to hear about, sex. I like the change in the section on feeding where more photos of slugs in action instead of static shots of their known food. Stuff like what we observed at Hantu recently. Sections in 1001 that I miss having are stuff like the details on the slug look alikes like flatworms, lamellarins, onchs, allied cowries, etc.; as well as the section on associations from slug hitch-hikers to parasites. Also the not-so-relevant-but-fun/nice-to-know section on photographing nudis is also gone. Well, considering the number of good photos that plague Dr Rudman on the seaslug forum, guess most of the nudists already know the basics.

And now we get to the meat of the books. The slug parade!! The arrangement of the sluggie information is now alphabetically (family then genera then species) in NE instead of in decreasing complexity of the opistobranchs as it was in 1001. Furthermore, NE has around double the number of photos compared 1001!!! No wonder there was so much delay from the initial Christmas 2007 release date. Having the names arranged alphabetically does make things way easier to find, since we have had the alphabet ingrained into us from young. Figuring out and trying to remember the slug complexity hierarchy would easily give anybody a headache, and when you factor in the constant updating of species and all.... Also, in NE, the non-nudi opistobranchs are presented first, which is the opposite of 1001 where it was nudis first, other slugs later...

So aside from the new photos and new species recorded, what else is "new" in NE? Larger photos to oogle at and glomp. More details and descriptions on features of the species, and as far as possible, photos of juveniles and eggs are also included. Definitely moving away from being merely a field ID book to more of a proper reference book. Can't wait for the day when the encyclopedia would have expanded into a multi-volume set with all the down-and-dirty on seaslugs. That would be like putting the entire seaslug forum into print~~~~ Look! Even my plushies are intrigued by it! And nice and set to become nudists themselves!
Intrigued by nudibranchs but not so hot on getting the details on names and all? Here's another good read:
Both the Nudibranch Encyclopedia and the Nudibranch Behaviour books can be ordered from I-NSC. 1001 Nudibranchs is no longer available since it's supposed to be updated with NE. And no, I am not being commissioned for any of these books. They really are good reads!

Click for the rambling...

Nudibranchs Encyclopedia

IT IS HERE IN SINGAPORE!!!! Thanks to Ivan for delivering it to office ^^ As well as making me one of the first few in Singapore to receive it!! *goes into fangirl mode* Rather heavy hardcover book but more nudi photos to oogle and glomp~~~ Photos much bigger that those in the 1001 Nudibranchs book.... Ria of WildSingapore has contributed a number of photos too (and is mentioned in the special thanks!), meaning Singapore slugs have made their mark in the book too!! Quite a thrill to see ^^ Shall I do a review of it? hmmm....


Order from I-NSC now!!

Click for the rambling...

森岡浩之の 「星界の紋章」 １－３

私はバカよ。　さっき、ラップトップのファイルを整理するとき、この日本語で電子 本を見つけた。　びっくりしたね！　持つのは、本当に忘れてしまったんの...　嬉しい～　＝＾－＾＝　実は、先日、シンガポールの紀伊国屋書店 (Kinokuniya)で中国語語版も見た。　さあ、やっとラフィールとジントの経験を読みたい...　でも、今忙し過ぎるので、時間がない。　ちょっ と大変だと思う。　それに、私の日本語版の「キノの旅」２－８　と「ふしぎ遊戯パーフェクトワールド」雑誌もまだ読める...　うん～　残念だね...　 １２月にJLPT3の試験を受けるつもりから、もっと　もっと勉強しなければならない。　頑張れね！

じゃ、今晩ご飯の時間から、また今度～

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