Marine Life of the North Sea and English Channel
Marine Life of the Mediterranean
The Shipwreck Decoder
Book reviews
Marine Life of the North Sea and English Channel
By Lawson Wood Bloomsbury Wildlife COST: £ 20 ISBN 978-1-39941552-1
Marine Life of the Mediterranean
By Lawson Wood Bloomsbury Wildlife COST: £ 16.99 ISBN 978-1-3994-1170-7
When( or if) the history of the British diving scene comes to be written, Lawson Wood will be recognised as one of its most productive and influential figures. With 16,000 + dives completed since 1965, he is the author of 50 books and innumerable articles. These two marine life guides are fitting representations of his work ethic, crammed with detail and great photography.
We get 226 busy pages and a wealth of marine life identification, featuring more than 500 species. This is all you’ ll need for most UK diving scenarios, though you should seek out a more specialist guide for esoteric subjects such as marine vegetation or the more obscure invertebrates.
For each species, you get key information on how to identify it, where they live, diet and behaviour. There are sections on habitats, conservation and oceanography, making the book an excellent primer for anyone who wants to develop an understanding of temperate water creatures in general, and British undersea life in particular.
Also on the Bloomsbury Wildlife imprint is a slightly smaller( 178 pages) companion volume on Marine Life of the Mediterranean. The list of species list forms the book’ s core, with preliminary chapters on the Med’ s key diving areas, stinging marine organisms, habitats, conservation and history.
Clear photographs show the species while the text offers enough information to keep most divers happy. Personally, I’ m not sold on the use of tiny symbols to denote habit,
diet and habitat. But they don’ t detract from the book’ s usefulness.
Quibbles aside, these are two fine publications, worthy of any diver’ s library. They are handy guides prepared by a knowledgeable author with a lifetime of experience. Simon Rogerson
The Shipwreck Decoder
By Ashton East Dived Up Publications
COST: £ 20 ISBN 978-1909455-42-9
If, like me, you’ ve ever looked at what fellow divers describe as a‘ shipwreck’ but seen nothing more than a tangled mass of scrap, this might be the book for you.
Wrecks do not present as the ethereal galleons of Disney fame. They are messy, complex structures. But what seems like chaos to the uninitiated is part of the ship’ s story, its life and its afterlife. The challenge of wreck diving is to understand what you’ re looking at, the better to appreciate the story of the ship and her crew. Ashton East has written a book to help us reach such an understanding. Spanning the eras of ancient craft to the present day, he explains everything from structural design and propulsion, to armaments and navigational instruments.
Do not expect a sumptuous colour book. This is more of a thorough but( ironically) dry textbook, with 400 plus line drawings. The idea is to enhance our experience and understanding of wrecks, not to present some idealised vision of wreck diving. As the author shows, the more you know about ship features, the better equipped you are to use components to navigate or‘ decode’ a wreck.
If wrecks aren’ t your thing, this book will be of scant interest; its purpose is not to popularise. Rather, it is aimed at the sizeable proportion of the diving public who love shipwrecks, and want to develop their understanding of the mysterious structures we investigate while diving. Strongly recommended. SR
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