What do you use to help identify sea creatures?

I'm always looking for a better tool to help me identify species new to me. Any websites or periodicals anyone can suggest? Just got back from Bonaire with my latest creature in question.

bonaire 2023 shrimp

3 hours ago, toque said:

I'm always looking for a better tool to help me identify species new to me. Any websites or periodicals anyone can suggest? Just got back from Bonaire with my latest creature in question.

iNaturalist.org

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

17 hours ago, toque said:

I'm always looking for a better tool to help me identify species new to me. Any websites or periodicals anyone can suggest? Just got back from Bonaire with my latest creature in question.

 

bonaire 2023 shrimp 1.07 MB · 8 downloads

If you're still looking, that photo is a juvenile banded coral shrimp - or barber pole shrimp: Stenopus hispidus

Thanks again. I thought it might be in the coral shrimp family. the color pattern wasn't quite right

No worries.

Have you got the "Reef Creature Identification" book? By Paul Human edited by Ned Deloach. Covers the Caribbean - ideal for Bonaire.

ISBN 1-878348-019

yes i do have the set. 

Hi, I find it most helpful to have several books on underwater creatures such as nudibranchs, fish, and crustacea.  There are several publishers of most useful books on sea life, such as IKAN Unterwasserarchiv in German, New World Publications in Miami, Florida, in English, etc.  A Google search should provide several publishers and book titles when keywords such as "Caribbean (or ocean name)Fish", "Crustaceans", "Nudibranchs", books are entered.  Searching with Amazon, or with the help of a librarian should yield many useful book titles.
Once one has an approximate idea of a critter's identity, i.e., "Caribbean nudibranch",  one can Google it to find more specific and useful information.  

Thanks for the response. I was hoping to find a one stop site/book for my needs.

2 minutes ago, toque said:

Thanks for the response. I was hoping to find a one stop site/book for my needs.

Sadly I don't think that exists. I think most people who are keen to identify what they see build up a large collection of books.

There are some 35,000 fish species, about half of them marine. So you need a resource specific to the area you are visiting. For most popular dive destinations there are ID books available and there may be destination specific websites.

A more general solution is to use FishBase's Information by Country / Island tool to get a quite comprehensive list of all fish you are likely to encounter wherever you are going. FishBase is aimed at scientific use but it is a great resource for divers as well. The list you get includes an image for most species and has a link to a page with more details. I study that list before a trip and use it extensively for identification during and after trips. I use it on a laptop but it should in principle work on a phone as well.

If you find a species that is not on the list, or one for which they don't have an image, then you can send your image/information to help complete the collection. I know several WetPixel members who do and it is an easy way to help both scientists and the diving community.

To use the tool:

1. go to fishbase.ca (or one of its mirrors close to you)
2. scroll down to the Information by Country/Island tool section
3. select your region of interest (let's say: Cuba)
4. click the 'Reef associated' bullet

This gives you a list of 464 species that have been reported for Mexico. I normally select the 'sort by Family'  and 'show photos' option at the top and the 'show all' option at the start of the table. Then I download the html page to my harddisk so it is faster and I can use it even if I am not online.

Sometimes it works better to specify a body of water instead of a country. For instance, if you ask for Mexico you will get both Caribbean and Pacific fishes mixed together. To search by water body you do this

1. scroll down to the Information by Ecosystem section
2. select Large Marine Ecosystems from the menu
3. select the ecoregion of choice (let's say Caribbean Sea)
4. click the 'Reef associated' bullet

This gives a table of species. There are fewer options than the method above but you can ask to include pictures.

It doesn't work equally well for all regions, depending on its size and how well it is studied. For instance, when I tried it for Bonaire it only showed 6 species. If you do it for the Philippines you get almost 2000. Another thing to note is that if you go muck diving you may want to select 'marine' instead of 'reef associated' as the latter doesn't include all fishes you may encounter in coastal waters.

Wow! Thanks, I'll give it a try.