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D
ivers know fish — or do
they? A couple of decades
ago a traveling diver who
wanted to learn about a
fish he had just seen would have to risk
a severe allergic reaction brought on by
contact with the rotting, moldy books
found in the libraries of dive resorts
or liveaboards. The poor images and
baffling descriptions made it almost
impossible to find the fish you thought
you saw. Back then divers really didn’t
know fish, and they often weren’t even
interested because identifying them on
site was just too difficult.
Ned DeLoach told me that when
he began photographing fish he
assumed the marine world was a
known commodity. But after talking
to scientists about where certain fish
might exist in the Caribbean, it became
apparent to him that even scientific
knowledge was limited. Filling a niche,
DeLoach and Paul Humann ushered
in the modern era of diving-naturalist
literature in 1989 when they self-
published Reef Fish Identification:
Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas.
Today, increased curiosity (due
in part to a growing awareness of
the threats coral reefs face) and the
popularity of digital cameras have
spawned an enthusiastic interest in
proper fish identification. No marine
biologist of the past two decades has
had greater influence on the direction
of scientific research about coral reefs
and divers’ knowledge of reef fish than
Gerald Allen. Author of 36 books and
more than 400 scientific papers, Allen
believes his 12,000 dives distinguish
him from ichthyologists who rely
on data and specimens collected by
others. Because he’s been on just about
every reef on the planet, often sharing
boats with traveling divers from
around the world, Allen understands
what they want to know about reef
fish. I remember reading the little
book he produced with Daphne Fautin
about anemonefish and coming away
surprised to have learned that specific
anemonefish lived with specific hosts.
No one before Allen had put this
information in an easy-to-understand
format for divers who wanted to
absorb a few interesting facts along
with their nitrogen.
Inspired by a grad-school mentor’s
gift — Max Weber’s and L.F.
DeBeaufort’s 11-volume Fishes of the
Indo-Australia Archipelago (published
between 1911 and 1962) — Allen has
just published, along with co-author
Mark Erdmann, a three-volume set,
Reef Fishes of the East Indies, the first
truly comprehensive, encyclopedic
and photographic coverage of reef
fishes from the world’s most biodiverse
region: the Andaman Sea eastward
through the Solomon Islands. With
2,631 species descriptions and even
more colorful images, this book
represents a distillation of Allen’s
lifelong passion for tropical reef fish.
“Weber and DeBeaufort was the
bible, as far as I was concerned,” Allen
said. “But as time went on I realized
it was really out of date. For example,
the section on shrimp gobies, which
was completed in 1953, well before
sport diving was massively popular,
described 16 species illustrated by
black-and-white images — the only
kind in the entire book. In our new
book, 83 shrimp gobies are described,
and they’re all illustrated by onsite
underwater images. What I’ve wanted
to do since my 1971 fieldwork in
Papua New Guinea was marry my own
passions (and the similar passions I saw
in sport divers around me) — diving,
photography and ichthyology — into a
new, improved encyclopedia of fishes.”
It took four years, and it wasn’t
easy. Besides the vast subject matter,
a few months after a major donor
offered to fund his seminal work
Allen suffered a serious spinal injury.
In 2009, after spending a month in
a U.S. hospital, he was medevaced
home to Australia, where he endured
another long hospital stay and months
of in-home rehabilitation. Facing life
without diving, he became depressed
and wondered if this was the end of
his diving. “But before the accident I
had planned a trip to the Andaman
Islands, and when the time came, I
was healthy enough to go for it,” Allen
said. “Even though I was basically a
walking zombie and very tentative, I
made it through the trip. It restored
my confidence to the point where I felt
I could continue with my life’s work.”
Considering the expansive area
that Reef Fishes of the East Indies
covers, it’s hard to imagine anyone,
even Allen, surveying every fish on
every reef. This is where Allen’s coral
fish diversity index (CDFI) comes in.
The CDFI is a method he devised for
obtaining survey results by estimating
the numbers of conspicuous indicator
species. Completing CDFIs involves
copious time underwater, and while
Allen, a longtime DAN Member, strives
to dive safely, he has had a few close
calls, including being caught underwater
during a tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
Allen’s commitment pays off for divers
and conservation organizations that use
18
|
SUMMER 2012
DIVE SLATE
//
A Magnum Opus
of Tropical Reefs
Gerry Allen and his Reef
Fishes of the East Indies
In the summer of
2012, Gerry Allen
and Mark Erdmann
published Reef
Fishes of the East
Indies, a compre-
hensive, 3-volume
set featuring 2,631
colorfully rendered
species.
COUR T E S Y UN I V E R S I T Y O F H AWA I I P R E S S