DIVE LOG AUSTRALASIA FEB 2025 ISSUE 410

PRESS RELEASE – NEW BOOK CONCISE GUIDE TO SEA FISHES OF AUSTRALIA N igel Marsh, working with New Holland Publishers, has just released a new guidebook –

Concise Guide to Sea Fishes of Australia . The book is a great introduction to Australian sea fishes, with 121 families and 193 species included in the guide.

Australia has the greatest number and diversity of sea fishes of any country in the world, with over 4000 species recorded. This is mostly because the country’s vast coastline is blessed with a huge variety of habitats for sea fishes. In the north, Australia’s warm tropical waters are filled with colourful reef fishes. Most of these tropical fishes are shared with other Indo-Pacific nations. While in the south, the nation’s cool temperate waters are populated with mostly endemic fishes, species seen nowhere else on the planet. Sea fishes are found in large numbers in every marine environment around Australia – mangroves, coral reefs, kelp forests, sandy bays, estuaries and in the deep dark waters off the continental shelf. Some also play an important role in the seafood industry. With over 4000 sea fishes found around Australia, and more discovered each year, Concise Guide to Sea Fishes of Australia is a wonderful introduction to these fascinating marine creatures. The fish families presented in this guide are the most common and the most interesting ones encountered by divers, snorkelers and anglers. This book is part of series of concise guides to Australian wildlife, with others including books on birds and reptiles. Nigel was asked to author the book after spending the last forty years diving around Australia and photographing its numerous fish species. Nigel Marsh is well known to Dive Log readers as he has been writing for the magazine since it first started. Nigel is an Australian underwater photographer and photojournalist whose work has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and books, both in Australia and overseas. Nigel has dived extensively around Australia and throughout Asia, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and Caribbean. His underwater photographs have won several international photographic competitions. Over the years Nigel has also authored over a dozen books, including Underwater Australia, Coral Wonderful, Diving with Sharks and Muck Diving , also published by New Holland. Concise Guide to Sea Fishes of Australia is now available in bookshops and on-line for $16.99 and is the perfect Christmas present for the diver or snorkeler that wants to know more about the fishes they encounter.

DIVE LOG Australasia #4 1 0 - February ‘2 5 74

www.divelog.net.au