Paul Naylor wished to enthral anyone who loves the sea, and help divers and snorkellers identify many of the animals they meet. He has succeeded. To class his book, though, as an identification guide does not do it justice. Each animal is beautifully illustrated with a series of colour photographs. In many cases the author has captured distinctive or unusual behaviour on film, often uniquely.
The book doesn't try to cover all animals you may encounter, but devotes space to the most common and most interesting. The cuttlefish, for example, merits 6 pages and 9 photographs, including a sequence of pictures showing the mollusc changing colour to perfectly match its background
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They may be less famous for it, but cuttlefish are much more skilful colour-change artists than chameleons...The animal seems to calculate all the angles, apparently matching the sea bed against which the observer is seeing it, rather than that directly below it."
With its fantastic photographs showing fascinating behaviour,
Marine Animals of the South West is a pleasure to own. If you dive anywhere in the British Isles buy this book, you won't regret it.
About the Author
Paul Naylor is a marine biologist and underwater photographer. In the last 20 years, he has dived all over the world. Photographic credits (besides
Marine Animals of the South West) include the California chapter in New Holland's
Top Dive Sites of the World, the National Marine Aquarium calendar - Beneath Plymouth Sound, and dozens of articles on marine life in all the major UK dive publications. For more information
read the interview he gave to SCUBA Travel.
