ID Guide Book Recommendations for Indo-Pacific Area

Hi All,

Was hoping to get feedback on what are the best Species ID Guide Books that are out there for the Indo-Pacific Area.

My particular interests are Reef Fishes, Crustaceans and Corals. Was hoping for suggestions that are:

1. Easy to use:
   • Electronic format so I can use it on my ipad or laptop.
   • Has a Family Page (with pictures) that I can use to quickly navigate hat section where I can see individual species or genus
      
2. Comprehensive number of species in its collection

I already own a few books but was wondering if there were better resources I can check out.

Thanks!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

EDIT: Formatting

You have the Paul Human/Ned Deloach one? It's very good.

Hi @TimG, yes I do. I have their Reef Fish Tropical Pacific (1st edition). It is still that old pdf format where you have to manually scroll down to the section you want to go to (with mismatched page number vs pdf page no. haha). 

I did a quick search and saw that they have a 2nd edition, on amazon it is paper back. But there is a site (fishid.com) that sells a PDF ebook version. Would you know if that is hyperlinked? I wouldn't mind getting the updated version if it was easier to navigate.

No, sorry, I don't know. I don't have electronic versions of their books. I'm travelling at the moment (gulp) and can't check the edition number I have. But it's esentially the same as the Caribbean versions and I have edition 3 I think.

Hi [mention=2756]TimG[/mention], yes I do. I have their Reef Fish Tropical Pacific (1st edition). It is still that old pdf format where you have to manually scroll down to the section you want to go to (with mismatched page number vs pdf page no. haha). 
I did a quick search and saw that they have a 2nd edition, on amazon it is paper back. But there is a site (fishid.com) that sells a PDF ebook version. Would you know if that is hyperlinked? I wouldn't mind getting the updated version if it was easier to navigate.

11 hours ago, Greenjuice said:

Yes I have the ebook version and use Bluefire Reader to view it on their recommendation. I prefer to navigate using search terms. It works quite well and you don’t realise it’s a PDF.

fishid.com were really good and helped me transition to this new reader after their previous reader went out of business.

I have both Fish ID and Creature ID for Tropical Pacific on an iPad and iPhone. So much more compact and light than packing books in luggage that I did before!

There is also a three volume fish ID book called Reef Fishes of the East Indies. This only appears on the App Store for iPads.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/reef-fishes-of-the-east-indies-vol-3/id705229079

I can’t remember the details but think you buy one volume (as an App) and then download the other two free. Each volume appears on your iPad as a separate app.

https://m.facebook.com/pages/category/Book/Reef-Fishes-of-the-East-Indies-440116506076969/posts/

Good luck!

Hi @Greenjuice,

Thanks for that tip on Reef Fishes of the East Indies, I downloaded Volume 3, and it is very usable and easy to navigate.

However, would you know if they are still working? Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it on the app store, only Volume 3. Volumes 1 and 2 seem to no longer be available (I checked on App Stores for the US and Philippines). The last activity on Facebook was Jan 2020, the links to their website is no longer working, nor the emails listed on their wordpress site.

Cheers,
Pomacentridae

That’s unfortunate. I got it some years ago and don’t have a clear recollection of the details.

I do have a vague memory that you only paid for one and the other two were free downloads. I’m not sure how you would find out more. I can see the same issue applies to me now too, when I look on the App Store only Vol.3 appears(so that might pose a problem for me should I upgrade my iPad in the future).

I did find this webpage which links to the other volumes. See if that works for you:

https://appadvice.com/app/reef-fishes-of-the-east-indies-vol-3/705229079

One problem with apps (at least with Apple) is if they disappear off the app store you can't get them back and if you update iOS Apple very helpfully removes them from your device and you cannot get them back unless they are put back on the app store.

I had the free Ocean Life ID app but it disappeared from the Australian app store so I lost it from my phone.  It was very promising app that allowed you to search by selecting characteristics of the organism and it would provide suggestions.  http://www.skaphandrus.com/en/ocean-life-identification

35 minutes ago, ChrisRoss said:

One problem with apps (at least with Apple) is if they disappear off the app store you can't get them back and if you update iOS Apple very helpfully removes them from your device and you cannot get them back unless they are put back on the app store.

I had the free Ocean Life ID app but it disappeared from the Australian app store so I lost it from my phone.  It was very promising app that allowed you to search by selecting characteristics of the organism and it would provide suggestions.  http://www.skaphandrus.com/en/ocean-life-identification

 

Very sad state of affairs and a good reason to avoid apps. PDFs seem to last a long time - I have a number of now multi-decade-old scientific publication pdfs (they started during the 90s) that can still be read. BTW I have the 3-volume tone. It is close to 1000 pages and weighs a bit. Probably the best resource for fishes of the region. Invertebrates might be a tougher nut to crack - the now 25 year old Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific by Gosliner et al. is a good place to start. There has been a lot of taxonomic revision since then .... One could go to Google with a genus name...

1 hour ago, Tom_Kline said:

Very sad state of affairs and a good reason to avoid apps. PDFs seem to last a long time - I have a number of now multi-decade-old scientific publication pdfs (they started during the 90s) that can still be read. BTW I have the 3-volume tone. It is close to 1000 pages and weighs a bit. Probably the best resource for fishes of the region. Invertebrates might be a tougher nut to crack - the now 25 year old Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific by Gosliner et al. is a good place to start. There has been a lot of taxonomic revision since then .... One could go to Google with a genus name...

Yeah the PDFs versions are the best. Most of what I have are about 2 decades old now. So was hoping to get more recent ID books. My main issue is navigation as most are just scans of physical books and are hard to navigate.

I was able to find a 2001 PDF Publication from Zoonetics on Indonesian Reef Fishes (Kuiter and Tonozuka) . What I found most useful is the PDF is hyperlinked with the first two pages with pictures of different families. If you click on it it takes you immediately to that section and back if needed. I found myself reading that more than the others just because of the ease of use and navigation.

For crustaceans, I have the Coral Reef Crustaceans: From Red Sea to Papua (Ryanskiy), but a scanned copy.

For Corals, I don't have any references for those.

@Greenjuice and @ChrisRoss,

Good news! I was able to get in touch with the creators of the Reef Fishes of East Indies app. They took down the app from the iOS store Jan 2020 as they are in the process of doing a major update and are hoping to re-release the app again soon. I am asking if they have a rough timeline and I am waiting on their response.

Cheers,

Pomacentridae

Excellent!

I had the Android version  and that also stopped working but earlier than Jan 2020. If I recall correctly, it cost about £35 sterling and I only had use of it for about 12 months. It vanished from Playstore also. I eventually found the contact details of the cpreators and emailed them asking for my app to work or my money back. As expected no reply. What a rip-off; put them down as a load of scheisters.

Could you possibly give me their current contact details so I can try again? PM me if you wish

Thanks in advance 

On 28/01/2021 at 3:56 AM, Pomacentridae said:

@Greenjuice and @ChrisRoss,

Good news! I was able to get in touch with the creators of the Reef Fishes of East Indies app. They took down the app from the iOS store Jan 2020 as they are in the process of doing a major update and are hoping to re-release the app again soon. I am asking if they have a rough timeline and I am waiting on their response.

Cheers,

Pomacentridae

Hi Everyone,

The reply I got from Reef Fishes of the East Indies was they are hoping for Mid-March 2021 to release the updated version. But they really cannot confirm because of COVID related issues.

Hi@JimG,

Sorry to hear about your experience. I also found it hard contacting them -- their official website, emails, etc. were all down. I found their Facebook page, they responded within the day to my queries. Link below:

https://www.facebook.com/Reef-Fishes-of-the-East-Indies-440116506076969/

Hope it helps.

Thanks Pomacentridae, very helpful.

Got a prompt reply from them as follows:

On 2/5/2021 at 8:24 PM, JimG said:

Thanks Pomacentridae, very helpful.

Got a prompt reply from them as follows:

 

Reef Fishes of the East Indies sent Today at 3:07 AM

You will have access to a new, updated version for Android. We had to remove it from both Google Play and the Apple App Store due to update requirements. That's why it stopped working. The new, updated versions are in development and will have more content as well. Please give us several weeks and you will be able to update your versions soon. Stay tuned -

The people to get angry with are Apple and Android - they force the updates and lock you out of apps.  I think the developers eventually give up as Apple etc. are so demanding and backwards compatibility seems to be against their business model.  So annoying to get an app that seems to work well only for it to vapourise at a keystroke.