This one is all about the pictures,
because the accompanying text is
minimal. Still, fair enough, how far can
you get into describing individual sea-
slug species?
You get the common and Latin
names, family, geographical
distribution, size and distinctive
features. Typically this boils down to
“Yellow-Face, Trinchesia Trinchesia sp.
Indonesia, 9mm. ID: red cerata, white
apex with tubercles.”
Particularly helpful, however, is the
photo index at the beginning of the
book that guides you to the right
group of nudibranchs. It does make a
difference, and the less unproductive
leafing around I have to do the better.
Underwater photographers Andrey
Ryanskiy and Yury Ivanov say they
evolved from being holiday-divers into
professionals who carry out hundreds
of dives every year in the Coral
Triangle countries. Lucky them.
This seems to be naturalist
Ryanskiy’s first book with Ivanov, but
solo he has previously come up with
five other “Reef ID” books, covering
Coral Triangle fish, Indo-Pacific
crustaceans, the Maldives, Indonesia
and the Philippines. They’re doing
a useful job.
Andrey Ryanskiy
ISBN: 9785604204917
Softback, 146pp, 16x23cm, £26.80
Also available on Kindle, £11.48COME TO GRIEF
IN THE WEST
Sea Of Storms: Shipwrecks of
Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly,
by Richard Larn
& Oliver HurstRichard Larn OBE, now 88, remains
one of Britain’s greatest experts in
historic shipwrecks. He started diving
way back in 1947, teaching himself in
the River Thames, and went on to gain
experience with the Royal Navy and
early BSAC during the 1950s.
Following a series of pioneering
wreck-detective expeditions to the
Scilly Isles in the 1960s he became
associated as diver and maritime-
history author with that part of Britain.
He has written a huge number of
wreck books, including the seminal
divers’ reference Shipwreck Index of the
British Isles, and any new title from the
master is bound to attract the
attention of divers.
His latest, Sea of Storms, doesn’t
break any new ground but it is a very
entertaining read. It covers 22 famous
shipwreck incidents that occurredalong the often-treacherous Cornish
coast (all southern except for the
Hanoveroff St Agnes) and his home
Scilly Isles.
They range in time from the
St Anthonytreasure galleon that sank
off the Lizard in 1527 to the 2003 loss
of the Mulheimoff Land’s End, a cargo
shipwreck brought about, intriguingly,
by a pair of trousers.
Over that almost half a millennium
of mayhem we read about a
chronological succession of tragic
incidents, divided into the “Age of
Sail”, “Sail Gives Way to Steam” and
“The Era of Modern Technology”.
Some of these incidents left wrecks
that can still be explored today,
others are protected or would be too
unrewarding and difficult to tempt us
now, but you’ll recognise many of the
names, from the Schiedam, Association
and Colossusthrough the Ansonand
Moheganto disasters still fresh in the
collective memory, like the Flying
Enterprise, Torrey Canyonand the
Penlee lifeboat.
Major wreck incidents have thinned
out in recent times, for which we must
be grateful, but the book reminds us
throughout how cheap life has been
over the centuries in the history of
ocean navigation.
The stories are told in Larn’s lively
style, effortlessly coloured with the
touches of human detail that bring
them to life, and while many are65BOOK REVIEW
familiar this retelling is
enjoyable.
A tailpiece to each
story covers what if
anything remains of
the wreck today for
divers to pick over –
these are very brief
notes and in no way
should be expected to
constitute any sort of
dive-guide.
The text is
accompanied only
by the illustrations
of Oliver Hurst,
executed in an old-
fashioned representational style with
a muted palette that initially led me
to assume that he might be a
contemporary of Larn’s, though
I believe he is in fact a relatively
young artist.
The pictures are a little wooden for
my taste, but they work well enough
with the text to create an attractive
coffee-table package that could make
a welcome gift for wreck-divers.
Mabecron Books
ISBN: 9780995502864
Hardback, 148pp, 25x25cm, £25BIG PICTURE
Europe’s Sea Mammals:
A Field Guide to the Whales,
Dolphins, Porpoises and Seals
by Robert Still, Hugh Harrop,
Tim Stenton & Luis DiasOK, THIS NEW BOOK is more about
informing topside than underwater
encounters. Getting close to big
mammals while submerged isn’t that
common in European waters, and
when you’re somewhere like Lundy or
the Farnes you probably have a good
idea of what it is you’re encountering.
Where the nudibranchs book
reviewed here is all about pictures but
not much to look at in itself, Europe’s
Sea Mammalsis the sort of field guide
that’s a pleasure to browse through.And, now that I’ve embarked on
this slightly unfair comparison, it also
has more pages, is jam-packed with
text and is quite a bit cheaper too.
Aligned with the WildGuides series
of books, most of which are dedicated
to British wildlife, and produced with
marine conservation charity ORCA,
this title is claimed to be the only
photographic guide dedicated to
European whale-watching.
“Europe” includes diver destinations
such as the Azores, Madeira, Canary
Islands and Cape Verde, and ranges
north as far as Svalbard and Iceland.
When you read that it covers all
39 species of whale, dolphin and
porpoise and nine species of seal in
the region that doesn’t sound too
many to cover but, unlike individual
nudibranchs, there is a whole lot to
say about each one of them.
That’s why we find more than 200pages rammed with every last iota
of information, plus more than 450
colour photographs and beautifully
rendered graphics and maps.
Also of interest is mapping data
that shows current distribution of the
species and how that might have
altered over time.
My only complaint is that the small
type needed to shoehorn so much
info into the space is too often set
across the entire width of the page.
Two columns would have made it
that much more readable at the size.
Fortunately, it’s a very legible face.
I imagine that whale-watchers need
all the help they can get to tell one
briefly glimpsed dorsal fin or flukes
from another. This well-written guide,
sized for portability, can only boost
their chances of correctly identifying
that pinniped or cetacean.
Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691182162
Softback, 208pp, 15x21cm, £17.60
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