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Rating: 
Summary: A dream come true!
Review: A good reference book for my dive trip to the Galapagos Is. I could find in the pictures, everything I saw underwater, with all the information a diver needs, from fish and marine invertebrates description, to the dive sites with detailed maps. The photos are very good. The reader can apreciate the efforts done by the author, in the plate drawings, creating an interest to get knowledge about whales or dolphins, for example. A really big improvement from the first edition, this new edition stands out as QUALITY! A beautiful souvenir for my "Dream come true".
Rating: 
Summary: an impressive showcase
Review: Correction: the book is not 280 pages but 308 pages, does not have 240 pictures but 288 colour photos on fish and marine life.Very few people have dedicated 18 years of their life to achieve such a remarkable piece of work, in both information and photographs. Constant had published a earlier book with the same title in 1992; this one is a considerable improvement. Sure, you could also get a copy of Jack Grove's "Fishes of the Galapagos", over 800 pages and worth a few hundred dollars, with pure rock botom scientific information. Not for the average diver, though.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre book on fabulous place and wildlife
Review: For my return to the Gal?pagos, and as a long time SCUBA diver and marine enthusiast (over 45 years), I was looking for a book that would be an all around field guide to the marine critters. Unfortunately, =this is not that book=. The layout is inconvenient, requiring one to move back and forth between a description of the animal and its photo- which often enough, turns out to be murky and not very revealing. The descriptions are brief to the point of being sketchy and forgetting some vital information, and there are some noticeable typographical errors. Though some of the information and citations are up-to-date, many are so old they verge on misinformation, and important books (Humann and DeLoach's book, for instance, are missing entirely from the non-annotated bibliography. Based on my personal experience diving with sharks and the data available during the last ten years, this book's information on sharks especially is misleading, out of date and overly alarming. Some of the island and dive site maps are crudely drawn- I have seen better drawn on white boards at dive briefings.Unfortunately, this appears to be THE field-totable book available at the moment on this topic, and that's why I have it. Here's hoping Msr. Constant revises, adds and updates his book- it could be a blessing. I do not recommend buying this book unless you NEED it. ...
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre book on fabulous place and wildlife
Review: For my return to the Galápagos, and as a long time SCUBA diver and marine enthusiast (over 45 years), I was looking for a book that would be an all around field guide to the marine critters. Unfortunately, =this is not that book=. The layout is inconvenient, requiring one to move back and forth between a description of the animal and its photo- which often enough, turns out to be murky and not very revealing. The descriptions are brief to the point of being sketchy and forgetting some vital information, and there are some noticeable typographical errors. Though some of the information and citations are up-to-date, many are so old they verge on misinformation, and important books (Humann and DeLoach's book, for instance, are missing entirely from the non-annotated bibliography. Based on my personal experience diving with sharks and the data available during the last ten years, this book's information on sharks especially is misleading, out of date and overly alarming. Some of the island and dive site maps are crudely drawn- I have seen better drawn on white boards at dive briefings. Unfortunately, this appears to be THE field-totable book available at the moment on this topic, and that's why I have it. Here's hoping Msr. Constant revises, adds and updates his book- it could be a blessing. I do not recommend buying this book unless you NEED it. ...
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre book on fabulous place and wildlife
Review: For my return to the Galápagos, and as a long time SCUBA diver and marine enthusiast (over 45 years), I was looking for a book that would be an all around field guide to the marine critters. Unfortunately, =this is not that book=. The layout is inconvenient, requiring one to move back and forth between a description of the animal and its photo- which often enough, turns out to be murky and not very revealing. The descriptions are brief to the point of being sketchy and forgetting some vital information, and there are some noticeable typographical errors. Though some of the information and citations are up-to-date, many are so old they verge on misinformation, and important books (Humann and DeLoach's book, for instance, are missing entirely from the non-annotated bibliography. Based on my personal experience diving with sharks and the data available during the last ten years, this book's information on sharks especially is misleading, out of date and overly alarming. Some of the island and dive site maps are crudely drawn- I have seen better drawn on white boards at dive briefings. Unfortunately, this appears to be THE field-totable book available at the moment on this topic, and that's why I have it. Here's hoping Msr. Constant revises, adds and updates his book- it could be a blessing. I do not recommend buying this book unless you NEED it. ...
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