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Our approach
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Identification of marine life from photographs is sometimes easy, sometimes impossible and most of the times difficult. We try to be conservative and provide a name only when we are reasonably sure that it is correct. Of course we make mistakes. If you spot one, please inform us.
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We have chosen to use common names as much as possible (i.e., mostly fishes) since we believe our audience, as we, are non-specialists. The down-side is the ambiguity this entails. Most species that have a common name actually have many. And many common names are used to refer to more than one species. And this is still within one language! Most of the time we use english names (the exception is the Scandinavian fauna and flora) simply because that's the language of our reference literature. We now also include the scientific name as well, and we also try to give the common name in both Swedish and English. For the latter, we are into some imaginative word smithing with regard to names in Swedish.
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For the Red Sea species we use the common name in Debelius if included, otherwise we use primarily the Collins pocket guide or whatever reference we finally found the creature in. For other tropical locations we prefer the Collins pocket guide.
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If our reference books fail to provide us with a positive identification, we turn to the wast, but less manageable, resources of the net. Some favorite sites are listed below.
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Books:
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Coral Reef Fishes, Indo-Pacific and Caribbean. Collins pocket guide 2001. Very good travel book with drawings of 2000 species of tropical reef-fish
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Red Sea Reef Guide by Helmut Debelius 2000. About 1000 photos of coral reef animals, mostly fish.
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Coral Reef Guide Red Sea by Lieske & Myers 2004. Collins. About 1000 photos of coral reef animals, mostly fish.
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Asia Pacific Reef Guide by Helmut Debelius 2000. About 1200 photos of coral reef animals, mostly fish, but a reasonable selection of invertebrates.
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Nudibranchs and Sea Snails Indo-Pacific Field Guide by Helmut Debelius 2000. About 1000 photos of marine snails.
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Dyreliv i havet by Frank Emil Moen & Erling Svensen. Kom förlag 2003. A great book (in Norwegian) about marine fauna in northern Europe with thousands of photos (also available in English and Swedish).
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Reef Fish Identification: Galapagos by Paul Humann and Ned Deloach 2003 (ISBN 978-1-878348-35-7). A must-have for diving Galapagos.
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Links:
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General
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World Register of Marine Species WoRMS. Searchable resource with more than 160 000 species.
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Poppe-images.com Great site for identification of many types of marine animals from the Philippines.
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SeaLifeBase Huge encyclopedia of marine life
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DiveGallery.com Nice photos of marine animals from the Philippines
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Diverosa. Homepage by Rokus Groeneveld & Sanne Reijs with fish and critter photos mainly from tropical waters
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The living marine resources of the western central pacific (FAO species identification guide for fishery purposes). Volume 1. Seaweeds, corals, bivalves and gastropods. Volume 2. Cephalopods, crustaceans, holothurians and sharks. Volume 3. Batoid fishes, chimaeras and Bony fishes part 1. Volume 4. Bony fishes part 2 (Mugilidae to Carangidae). Volume 5. Bony fishes part 3 (Menidae to Pomacentridae). Volume 6. Bony fishes part 4 (Labridae to Latimeriidae), estuarine crocodiles, sea turtles, sea snakes and marine mammals (Elopidae to Linophrynidae). (NOTE: large pdf's)
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The Marine Species Identification Portal offers information on thousands of different species in the world's oceans and seas, and includes identification keys.
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The Swedish Species Information Center 'ArtDatabanken' lists Swedish names for Echinoderms (tagghudingar), Tunicates (manteldjur) and fishes (fiskar) that may be found in Sweden.
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Swedish names of invertebrate taxa (Martin Larsvik)
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Fish
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Fishbase.org The number one site with 30000 species of fish from the whole planet.
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Fish name list of Kent Andersson A guide to scientific names and acceptable names in English och Swedish.
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Sea slugs
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SeaSlugForum.net Lots of photos with expert identification and discussions.
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Philippine-sea-slugs.com Sea slugs from the Philippines.
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Nembro.info Sea slugs and flatworms from all around the world.
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Nudipixel.net Identification of nudibranches and sea slugs.
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Sea squirts
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Ascidians.com Lots of photos with expert identification.
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Seaweeds
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Seaweed.ie Michael Guiry's Seaweed Site.
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Algaebase.org Immense database of algae including thousands of photos
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