Book reviews

Developments in hydrobiology—aquatic telemetry

E.B. Thorstad, I.A. Fleming and T. F. Naesje, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands,

2002, ISBN 1-4020-0877-5 (hardback), US$106.00, GBP 70.00, Euro 110.00

This book is a series of 33 peer-reviewed papers that were presented at the Fourth

Conference on Fish Telemetry in Europe held in Trondheim, Norway, 26–30 June 2001.

Having attended a previous meeting in La Rochelle, France in 1997 and enjoyed it, I was

anxious to view this volume that resulted from the latest conference. The book is

structured into three sections ‘‘Effects of human impacts and fisheries management’’,

‘‘Migration and habitat utilization’’ and ‘‘Methodology and new technology’’. As a marine

biologist with an interest in acoustic telemetry, I realised I was probably not the right

person to do justice to this book.

While there are some marine and estuarine studies covered in this book its main

focus is on tracking freshwater species in rivers and lakes with many of the studies from

Europe and Canada. Furthermore, virtually, every paper covers a very specific, often

small-scale study (e.g., how a handful of fish move in a region of a European stream or

how power stations or obstacles in streams or rivers influence fish movement and

behaviour).

While a limnologist may praise this volume, I found most of it rather dry, generally not

pertinent to my interests and with some chapters exceedingly difficult to endure. On

several occasions, I was literally fighting off falling asleep while attempting to get through

a chapter. I expect that most marine biologists would not find this volume relevant enough

to warrant purchase (out of the 33 papers, only 6 deal specifically with non-freshwater

tracking). There certainly would, however, be specific chapters of interest to those working

in the marine environment.

A major problem limiting the widespread interest in this volume by marine

biologists is that the majority of the studies are based on radio telemetry, a

technique that cannot be used in the marine environment. Marine biologists have

to rely on acoustic telemetry for their tracking research. Thus, freshwater radio-

telemetry tracking often holds little or no relevance to those working in the marine

realm.

The book suffers a major drawback by the lack of broad scale studies or chapters that

place studies in the wider context. The addition of more review papers, and papers

assessing ‘where have we come from’, ‘where are we going’ and ‘what technological

innovations promise to accelerate or transform the field’ would have greatly enhanced the

wider interest in this volume. I would expect that many marine biologists will seek to

obtain the few specific papers that are of interest to them rather than purchasing the

complete volume.

www.elsevier.com/locate/jembe

Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology

303 (2004) 261–263

George Jackson

Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies

University of Tasmania

GPO Box 252-77

Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia

E-mail address: George.Jackson@utas.edu.audoi:10.1016/j.jembe.2003.11.013

Ecosystems of the world—No. 28: Ecosystems of the deep

P.A. Tyler (editor), Elsevier Science BV, The Netherlands, 2003; ISBN 044482619x,

US$200, Euro 200

Research on deep-sea ecosystems began in the late 1800s and has been accelerating

since the 1960s; however, remoteness and relative inaccessibility generally have limited

the intensification of research in the deep-sea environment. Hydrothermal vents stand out

as an exception. Their discovery in the late 1970s captured the imagination of scientists

and the public alike, resulting in a re-allocation of limited research resources to this newly

discovered habitat and away from the ‘‘regular’’ deep sea. In the last 5 years, the

recognition of the potentially extremely high biodiversity of deep-sea ecosystems is

stimulating a resurgence of interest in the ‘‘regular’’ deep-sea. Thus, the publication of

‘‘Ecosystems of the deep’’ is particularly timely.

‘‘Ecosystems of the deep’’ provides a comprehensive up-to-date treatise of our

knowledge of deep-sea ecosystems. It is organized in 12 chapters (as well as an

Introduction and an Epilogue), each written by the expert(s) in the field. The first of

these chapters provides a broad overview of habitat characteristics, sampling techniques,

ecological processes and feeding types in the deep sea. It serves mostly as an introduction

and draws extensively upon the textbook by Gage and Tyler (‘‘Deep-Sea Biology’’),

including some of their figures. The next chapter focuses on the pelagic environment of

the open ocean and much space is allocated to basic oceanography, which can be found in

any introductory text and need not be included in a specialized volume. A chapter

describing the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of ecosystems in reducing

environments, such as hydrothermal vents and cold seeps follows. Overall, the information

is well integrated, although presented at a more advanced level than the earlier two

chapters, thus requiring some background knowledge of deep-sea biology. The following

five chapters provide a wealth of information on the ecosystems of the Atlantic, Pacific

and Indian Oceans, and the polar and peripheral seas. While different approaches are taken

in different chapters (e.g. taxonomically oriented for the Atlantic Ocean and process-

oriented for the Pacific Ocean), the integration at the ocean basin level is effective. For the

better-studied basins, such as the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, these chapters are the first

comprehensive and integrated presentation of an extensive literature. The chapters on

ecosystems in the less studied basins, such as the Polar oceans and the peripheral seas,

draw maximally upon limited existing information, including the Russian literature. The

remaining four chapters address broader concepts and processes. The chapter on patterns

in biodiversity is clearly written and very well organized, although, with the exception of

Book reviews262