Monday, March 06, 2006

Best Hawaii fish book? Best Hawaii travel guide books?


I get a number of customers asking which books are the best for local fish information. My recommendations are Hawaii's Fishes by John Hoover, and Shore Fishes of Hawai'i by John Randall. Hawaii's Sea Creatures by Hoover is also a fabulous reference for local invertebrates. These are the books you find the divers who live here buy. They are excellent.

For guide boooks to the various islands, the "Revealed" series is the one most people living here recommend and purchase for themselves. The authors have written guides "Hawaii the Big Island Revealed", "Maui Revealed", "Oahu revealed" and "the Ultimate Kauai Guidebook". They are all excellent and contain a lot of information that most any visitor would want to know. The authors of these books live in Hawaii, so they aren't guidebooks written by a professional writer who made the rounds in a month or two and rushed out a book - they contain lots of good info. I would highly recommend you pick the appropriate one up if you are thinking of visiting one of these islands. Do note that on occasion some information may be outdated, trail access may be through private property, businesses closed, new businesses not yet reviewed and such, and you may find that your opinion varies from theirs', yet it's still a great handbook to have and well worth the 10-12 bucks.

I've taken the liberty of putting direct links to these books on Amazon down below my links and archives on the right side of the blog.

The picture above is of another Whitemouth Moray Eel. It's one of my favorite "teethy" pictures I've taken.

Later,

Steve

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve, Thanks for recommending my book Hawaii's Fishes. Just wanted to let you and your customers know that a new 2nd ed. is now out and in the stores (as of Dec 2008). The new book has more species, info on sea turtles, about 100 more photos, and updated information on dive and snorkel sites in Hawaii. - Aloha, John Hoover

Steve said...

You are welcome John,

Of course, now I'm going to have to pick up a new one to add to the library.

Aloha,

Steve

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your recommendations.