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Product Description A Practical Guide to the Marine Animals of Northeastern North America features Leland Pollock's innovative, user-friendly keys that circumvent many of the difficulties of traditional identification systems. Pollock's keys offer choices among distinctive attributes of the specimen. Results are compared to all variations found in the region's fauna, using a neatly displayed tabular form accompanied by many line drawings. The introduction describes marine habitats, tips for conducting fieldwork, and outlines groups of organisms found in northeastern North America, from Nova Scotia to North Carolina. Although designed for the nonexpert, the manual provides coverage sufficient to meet the more demanding needs of those conducting biotic surveys and advanced studies in the region. Includes user-friendly keys for common marine animals, North Carolina to Nova Scotia, from splash zone to the edge of the continental shelf. From Library Journal Ranging from the Canadian maritime provinces to Cape Hatteras, this comprehensive field guide covers macrofauna, i.e., both vertebrates and invertebrates visible to the unaided eye, that live from high-tidal-water levels to the margin of the offshore continental shelf. Reptiles, such as marine turtles, and mammals, such as whales and dolphins, are included, but insects, arachnids, and birds are excluded. Users can identify a totally unknown marine organism through a tabular key system and are then referred to more detailed descriptions in such sources as R.W. Miner's Field Book of Seashore Life (1950) and Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Seashore Creatures (1981). Practical advice on timing field trips to the tides, basic field techniques, and safety guidelines are all provided by Pollock (biology, Drew Univ.), who has taught field courses in marine science for many years and draws upon this experience. The text is profusely illustrated, with some illustrations taken from authoritative earlier sources that are fully acknowledged and others original to this volume. A six-page bibliography of sources and a bibliography of illustration credits are included for further study. A valuable addition to the reference collections of undergraduate academic libraries as well as specialized collections in biology.?Judith Barnett, Pell Marine Science, Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Kingston Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "At last a guide to fish as well invertebrates with profusely illustrated keys and the most recent terminology. It is not only practical but authoritative as well." -- Howard Evans, Cornell University "Pollock's exceptionally broad coverage, form sponges to marine mammals and including larvae and parasites, and his unusual approach of using tabular keys with associated illustrations should have considerable appeal for student, professionals, and anyone else interested in the identification of marine creatures." -- John H. Dearborn, University of Maine "Pollock's tabular format provides a more natural approach to organism identification. This well-written guide is an excellent supplementary text for a field-oriented marine biology course, but also stands well on its own." -- Kenneth A. Thomas, Hillsborough Community College About the Author Leland W. Pollock is a professor of biology at Drew University. He has taught field-based marine biology at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, Massachusetts, and Shoals Marine Laboratory, Maine.