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Rating: 
Summary: Extraordinary! The beach will never look the same to you.
Review: An exceptional book. Those tar spots on the beach, those yucky lumps of rotting kelp, those minor shellfish will all become fascinating interacting worlds for you. Beautiful photos that excite and succinct explanations that educate in a package that could well be an excellent coffee table book. We should all hope that this is what all nature books would become. I recommend this book to anyone interested in ocean life (not just Monterey Bay).I am giving this book out as gifts to friends and relatives.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary! The beach will never look the same to you.
Review: An exceptional book. Those tar spots on the beach, those yucky lumps of rotting kelp, those minor shellfish will all become fascinating interacting worlds for you. Beautiful photos that excite and succinct explanations that educate in a package that could well be an excellent coffee table book. We should all hope that this is what all nature books would become. I recommend this book to anyone interested in ocean life (not just Monterey Bay). I am giving this book out as gifts to friends and relatives.
Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Accomplishment!
Review: I'm an avid Monterey Area scuba diver who was on the verge of thinking I knew something about Monterey marine life. That was before I read this book. Despite my many hundreds of dives and many hours of time spent studying the things I'd seen this book opened my eyes to all sorts of things I'd never noticed before. Anybody interested in west coast marine life simply must have this book. One of it's best features is the novel organization. It's broken up into habitat areas rather than by Phylum/Genus/Species etc. This really helps the reader understand the relationships between the various organisms. Also the photographs are truly exceptional. Overall a real gem.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful combination of marine bio and great photos
Review: This book provides many many photographs of marine organisms found in Monterey Bay (California coast). The photographs are clear, well-reproduced, and organisms are identified by common and Latin name. This alone would be a good reason to buy the book. However, the authors went beyond excellent photography into detailed marine biology. For every organism, they provide fascinating details from the biology of the organism, often supplemented with additional photographs illustrating the phenomenon being described. I have taught chemistry, biology, and marine biology at the high school level, as well as being a SCUBA diver; I found this book to be full of new and fascinating information, well presented and carefully documented, with scientific sources cited (but not obnoxiously). I loaned this book to two high school students, one fascinated with marine biology, one not so fascinated, and they were both enthralled: "that book is so cool!" "did you know anemones fight?" One of the best books on the ocean environment I've ever seen; clearly a labor of love on the part of the authors.
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