| Two Oceans |
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| Written by Moira de Swart | |
| Sunday, 23 May 2010 22:42 | |
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I was five years old. It was not the first time I had been to the sea, but it was the first time I remember being at the sea. Lying on the sand was some pretty purple jelly. My cousin called it a “jelly fish” and suggested that I stay far away from it. We swam in the sea and collected sea shells to bring back to Johannesburg. My aunt told me the names of some of the shells. I was intrigued to discover the little pink ones were called “baby’s toes”. They looked like baby toes.
At school we learned about the coelacanth, a “living fossil”, which had been thought to be extinct. My father, an East London boy, told me he remembered its discovery in 1938, when my father was twelve years old. At some stage I acquired a piece of coral jewellery. My father explained to me what coral was, and how it was formed, and how it was endangered and how this affected other marine life. I learned that life under the sea can be quite scary for the little creatures which live there. I never wore coral again.
In the early 1970s my uncle went to work in Cape Town for a large fishing company. In 1976 we were aboard his company’s ship for the start to the Cape to Rio Yacht Race. I was about to become interested in marine life, its conservation and the responsible use thereof.
In my early married life I once came home to find two live crayfish in the bath. My ex-husband had been given them as a gift. I have never eaten crayfish since that day.
Winding through all this were the “tales of the seven seas” which spoke of mermaids and mariners, ancient and modern, the treasures of the world transported on the seas, and the “Here be dragons” of the unknown things at the end of the world.
All these memories, and more, were stirred by this beautiful and informative book, an expanded and revised edition of an earlier volume. The jellyfish on the title page, the crayfishes were definitely West Coast rock lobsters (page 102), the shells are really called Baby’s toes (page 186) and the coelacanth (page 340) is every bit as ugly as I remember it.
This book is a marvellous field guide, starting from the grasses and the wildflowers in the dunes (and there is a really beautiful photograph of the vygies in the dunes at Bloubosstrand looking across at Table Mountain) and moving down onto the beaches where the birds tease the dogs, into the tidal pools and out into the sea where the birds and the mammals compete for the fish. No aspect of marine life, lifeguards and beach belles excepted, is excluded. There are lots of full colour photographs and they make the book a most enjoyable and easy “browse”.
The book is set out in phylum and class (with extra information about these at the beginning of the section) which makes identification relatively simple (I know from experience that it is never as easy as one thinks it is going to be) and it includes a distribution map for every species (and there are over 1900 described) which is always a helpful feature.
The authors are all internationally recognised academics and published writers/ photographers/ researchers in the field of marine biology and science. Lynnath Beckley is an Associate Professor of Marine Science at Murdoch University, Western Australia, and her special area of interest is the Indian Ocean. Professor George Branch and his biologist wife, Margo, have both published widely and been awarded many times for their contributions to education and conservation. Margo Branch has wide interests and she has writer “Trees of South Africa”, “Seaweeds of Southern Africa”, “A Field Guide to the Mushrooms of South Africa” together with several books on flora and fauna for children. Professor Charles Griffiths is the Director of the Marine Biology Research Centre at UCT and he has also co-written a book on insects with his wife as well as a pocket guide “Seashore Life”.
The real wonder of the book is that it makes me eager to head to our beaches for my next holiday, book in hand, ready to explore and learn. And that makes it a desirable book to own.
Title: Two Oceans Sub-title: A guide to the marine life of southern Africa Authors: G M Branch, M L Branch, L E Beckley, C L Griffiths Photographers: George Branch, Charles Griffiths, Dennis King Publishers: Struik Nature Year: 2010 Recommended Selling Price: R290.00 ISBN 978 1 77007 772 0
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