Getting Marine Life Identified

[Salil Sahani]

Hello Everybody,

Does Anyone Know any Resources Online Where We Can Id Marine Life that We Photograph ? Fishes, Nudis, Seacuccumbers, Anemones Etc.

Do We Have Anyone On this site Who Specialise in Certain Species or Genus ?

Any Good Book ( For Indo Pacific Region ) That I Can Refer too ?

Thankyou,
Salil

[scottg]

Here's a great book on Indo-pacific nudibranchs
http://www.amazon.com/Indo-Pacific-Nudi ... 0970057431

[Salil Sahani]

Thankyou Scott

[MOliveira]

Hi Salil,

I use to browse some sites when searching for IDs.

Here are some links:


http://www.skaphandrus.com/especies.asp?contexto=5&lang=en This one is a great Portuguese website
http://filaman.ifm-geomar.de
http://www.nudipixel.net/ This one have a lot of information about Nudi´s (even unknow list)
http://www.seaslug.info/

Good dives
M.Oliveira

[nwscubamom]

Are you looking just for Indo-Pacific critters or did you mean all regions in general?

A great book for the Tropical Pacific is Reef Fish Identification, by Allen, Steele, Humann and DeLoach.

Post a critter here and we'll do our best to help you figure out what it is.

- Janna

[Salil Sahani]

Thankyou Very Much M.Oliveira for the Links Thankyou

Thankyou Janna I Am Especially Looking for Any Species ( Vertebrates And Non Vertebrates ) Found in Indo Pacific Region

Yeah Will do that Thankyou

[marinebio]

I run http://marinebio.org and have tons of resources in there to help with species ID too. In addition to the great resources listed above, we use a lot of books that we list in our library at http://marinebio.org/Research/References/ (click on the Marine Life Identification link on the right). I'm happy to help ID anything you have online if you post links.

[Salil Sahani]

Thankyou Very Much for the Link David

Regards,
Salil

[Leslie Harris]

For Indo-Pacific inverts I recommend "Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific" by Gosliner, Behrens, & Williams and "Tropical Pacific Invertebrates" by Colin & Arenson. Authors of the first book are taxonomists; they & the authors of the second book consulted many other taxonomists to verify the ids. Some names have changed over time but they are still the best & most comprehensive english-language guides. In addition to Marinebio's site you can find many other good id books - especially nudi guides - at Sea Challengers (www.seachallengers.com).

There are a LOT of on-line sites with identified photos. The problem is that the quality of the identifications really varies. What happens is that the photographers rely on other sites or books to match their photos with names but the original ids are poor so the mistakes just get passed on. Often the photographers don't have an good eye for details, or they don't know the important characters for identifications. The smaller an animal is the harder it is to get an accurate id even with a good photo because the right features don't show up. That's true even for large animals. For example, separating crustacean species can depend on the shape of internal organs or the number of tiny spines on a leg - all things that don't show up in photos.

Janna is fantastic for Northeast Pacific marine life in general. Our membership is just starting to grow but we do have several people who are fanatic about getting good ids and are also fanatics about various groups like nudis, fish, etc. Post anything you've got questions about & we'll do the best we can!

[Salil Sahani]

Thankyou Very Much Leslie

Sorry for the Late Reply