Eye of the Shoal
A Fishwatcher's Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything
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- €11.99
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- €11.99
Publisher Description
'Scales's genuine appreciation and awe for fish are contagious.'- Science
'Delightful' - New Scientist
Seventy per cent of the earth's surface is covered by water. This vast aquatic realm is inhabited by a multitude of strange creatures and reigning supreme among them are the fish.
There are giants that live for centuries and thumb-sized tiddlers that survive only weeks; they can be pancake-flat or inflatable balloons; they can shout with colours or hide in plain sight, cheat and dance, remember and say sorry; some rarely budge while others travel the globe restlessly. And yet the mesmerising and complex lives of fish remain largely underrated and unseen, living hidden beneath the waterline, out of sight and out of mind.
Helen Scales is our guide on an underwater journey, as we fathom the depths and watch these animals going about the glorious business of being fish. As well as the fish, we meet devoted fishwatchers past and present, from voodoo zombie potion hunters and scientists who taught fish how to walk to nonagenarian explorers of the deep sea.
Woven throughout are vignettes of Helen's own aquatic explorations, from eerie nighttime dives with glowing fish and up-close encounters with giant manta rays, to floating in the middle of a swirling shoal being watched by thousands of inquisitive eyes.
As well as being a rich and entertaining read, this book will inspire readers to think again about these animals and the seas they inhabit, and to go out and appreciate the wonders of fish, whether through the glass walls of an aquarium or, better still, by gazing into the fishes' wild world and swimming through it.
'Engaging and informative' The Economist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Popular science books don't get much better than this accessible and eye-opening look at fish by marine biologist Scales (Spirals in Time). She peppers her prose with amusing asides, in keeping with the book's Douglas Adamsesque subtitle, and snapshots of unusual behavior and characteristics (such as the Amazon's Splash Tetra, whose eggs are laid on a leaf overhanging the river, requiring the father to splash them once every minute for two days to keep them moist). But this is much more than just an aquatic safari to peek at oddities; Scales provides the history of relevant zoological classifications, which initially grouped marine mammals along with fish, and the fascinating history of the scientists who studied fish, such as the 17th century English naturalist whose De Historia Piscium took away funding from Isaac Newton's work. The most fascinating sections provide insights into the complex ways fish use color, including communicating with each other using "secret graffiti," and into the dynamics of fish schools. Her vivid descriptions of the animals described "a Moorish Idol hunches in a small cave, indistinct and grey, like a poorly developed image of itself" skillfully supplement the illustrations. Fans of David Attenborough's nature documentaries will find this a worthy prose equivalent.
