Rudy van der Elst, Everyone's Guide to Sea Fishes of Southern Africa. Photography by Dennis King. Johannesburg: CNA, 1995.
Hard cover, 28.5 x 22 cm, 112 pages, illustrated. Light shelf wear to cover, lamination rippling in a small area of the upper board, owner's name on the endpapers and verso of title-page. Good condition.
The coastline of southern Africa extends more than 5 000 kilometres from the mouth of the Zambezi River in central Mozambique to the Cunene River which forms the boundary between Namibia and Angola on the western flank of the continent. This vast seaboard of sandy benches, rocky shores, lagoons and estuaries, coral reefs and deeper, offshore reefs, is swept by two great ocean currents, the mighty Agulhas bringing warmer waters down the eastern coast and the equally important Benguela driving cold Antarctic waters up the western coast. These ocean 'rivers', the range of marine habitats, as well as the effects of the continental shelf, the tides and prevailing winds have created an environment that supports more than 2 200 species of marine fishes, about one sixth of all those known to science.
A book of this nature cannot hope to cover all of these in any detail; indeed, to try would be a pointless exercise ending only in a meaningless list. We have sought rather to provide a stimulating glimpse of the wonderful world of marine fishes, and have therefore concentrated on a representative number of common or otherwise interesting members of the major groups found in local waters. Wherever possible photographs of live fishes in their natural habitats have been included, but underwater photography is not that easy in southern Africa as we are not always blessed with the crystal clear waters found elsewhere in the world, and so, where turbid seas and other logistic difficulties have prevented good underwater shots, we have included specimen photographs.
So many world environments face serious threats as we move toward the 21st century and the marine world is no exception. Oil spills, chemical wastes flushed into the ocean through our rivers, overfishing and other hazards are all examples of how we have degraded the seas around us. Reversing this appalling trend is not going to he easy, but we hope that in some small way this book will help by stimulating an awareness of the sea and the creatures that live in it.
