Pacific Marine Fishes Book 2

fishes of southern japan and the western pacific
by Dr. Warren E. Burgess and Dr. Herbert R. Axelrod

This book is a continuation of Pacific Marine Fishes Book 1, in fact it uses the same index and the pagination starts at 283. Here there are anemone fishes and damsels, scats, mullets, herrings, sardines, razorfishes, needlefishes, the archerfish! a few seahorses, flying fishes, squirrelfishes, soldier fishes, perches, goatfish, sweetlips, moray eels, two types of batfish (completely unrelated), more kinds of angelfish, surgeonfishes and lots of butterfly fishes. Triggerfish and filefish. Puffers, boxfish and cowfish. Jacks, porgies, snappers and nibblers. Many wrasse, basslets, gobies and blennies.  Parrotfishes and scorpionfish. Hawkfish, catfish, sharks and wobbegongs. Sea robins and pearlfishes, lionfish, frogfish and porcupine fish. Rays, gunards, knifejaws and many more. They sure do have curious names, don't they- and even more curious shapes and patterns. I did not know there were so many kinds of cardinal fish- the two I am familiar with are the pajama cardinal fish and the banggai cardinalfish. Here eight others are pictured- and one of them- Bleeker's- has the only double-page spread in the entire book. The fish pictured left of center on the cover- a devil stinger- looks like someone took a bite out of its face. Some of the fish in this book are repeats of species featured in Book 1- but shown again because much better photos were provided. In particular, the images of the psychedelic fish and the mandarin fish in here, while not as vivid as what you can find online, are much improved over the first volume. There are many detailed illustrations for fish species of which no clear photos were available. I didn't find the text quite as interesting as before- but still read it through.

Rating: 3/5                 277 pages, 1973