Updated guidebook has everything you need
Fox owns the rights to the movie and at the end of the day the studios have been gripped with superhero fever and if there’s not a superhero in it, they kind of don’t want to make it. Your book at times acts as a Hollywood how-to guide. What advice would you have for aspiring film-makers?
We can’t make movies without scripts and there’s no cost to writing a script, so my advice to newcomers is do it yourself: Write your own script, shoot your shorts, edit your shorts. – Washington Post SOUTH Africa’s marine environment is extraordinarily rich in biodiversity, and encompasses an incredible nine bio-regions!
The seas and shores around the country represent a treasure trove to those who use the beaches, visit rock-pools, Scuba-dive, snorkel and fish. But, with such a huge number of species of every kind to be found, knowing “what’s what” can be quite a feat.
Enter the experts: Professors George Branch and Charles Griffiths, Dr Lynnath Beckley, and Margo Branch, and their book (newly released in its fourth edition) The guidebook is perhaps the best-known and most widely used guide to marine life in South Africa.
This applies both to hobbyists and amateur rock-pool enthusiasts as well as to marine scientists and students in the field.
As someone who works in the marine environment daily, and spends a lot of time on the rocky shores and underwater, has been an indispensable part of my field kit ever since I first discovered it.
It is invariably the first book I recommend to anyone asking about ocean guidebooks or reference guides.
The book uses clear, full-colour photographic images of the live creatures and plants (in their habitats) for species identification, with detailed line-drawings for differentiation between closely related species where necessary.
The different groups into which living creatures are organised (phyla) are described, and then colour-coded on the pages for ease of reference. There is a useful introduction to general scientific nomenclature and coastal processes, including characteristics of the southern African coastline.
There is also a helpful section on how to use the book, which is very user-friendly.
The comprehensive coverage of numerous species, from all different groups – invertebrates to seaweeds to fish, reptiles, birds and mammals – makes this book a fantastic one-stop shop for anyone who wants to be able to identify the plants and creatures most often seen in the intertidal and shallow sub-tidal areas of South Africa’s coast.
It’s useful also just to enrich their shore- or sea-time with some extra knowledge.
As part of the updates from the previous version, this edition includes over 2 000 species, has updated the names of 245, has added four extra plates, and many new photographs.