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Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 243 (2000) 305–308
www.elsevier.nl / locate / jembe
Book reviews
The Biology of Sea Turtles,
edited by Peter L. Lutz and John A. Musick; Springer Verlag, Heidelberg; 1996; ¨
432 pp.; DM 177.00, o S 1293.00, sFr 160.00, GBP 68.00, US $85.00; ISBN 0-8493-8422-2.
Within a two-year period there have been two important books published on the subject of sea turtle biology (Bjorndal, 1995). Both are multi-author publications but despite the semblance in title, the contents are largely complementary rather than repetitious.
Marine turtles show many similarities in their biology and given the short period of time spent by females on shore during the nesting period, they are the focus of critical attention in most publications. In that respect this book is no different, with two chapters devoted to the effects of nest temperature and the reproductive effort. A notable and timely contribution to this aspect of the work, is the chapter on orientation and natal beach homing. This subject has intrigued the scientific population and the interested general public for many years and although not definitive in its conclusions with respect to the adults, provides evidence to support the use of visual, wave and magnetic cues by juveniles.
The book also includes a comprehensive review of the effects of coastal urbanisation, tourism, pollution and the ever increasing problem of incidental capture in marine fisheries, on population dynamics.
The choice of subject matter is well balanced and interesting. However, given the spread of technologies used it is beyond the abilities of one reviewer to make authoritative comment on the scientific novelty and veracity of each topic covered.
As an introduction to those now entering the field, the book offers a commendably up to date and extensive bibliography, although in the chapter on nest temperature, it is a pity that the recent work done on the Mediterranean loggerhead and green turtles was not available to the authors.
As in many books of this type, the organisation of the bibliographies is inconsistent. It would have been easier on the reader to provide a single bibliography.
306 Book reviews / J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 243 (2000) 305 –308
Reference
Bjorndal, K.A. (ed.) 1995. Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 615 pp.
Roger Tippett and Sally E. Solomon
Division of Veterinary Anatomy Department of Veterinary Preclinical Studies University of Glasgow Veterinary School Bearsden Road Glasgow G61 1QH
UK
0022-0981 / 00 / $ – see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. P I I : S 0 0 2 2 - 0 9 8 1 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 1 0 9 - 4
Quantitative Fish Dynamics,
by Terrance J. Quinn II and Richard B. Deriso; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 1999; 542 pp.; GBP 67.95; ISBN 0-19-507631-1.
The need to manage exploited fish stocks has been a stimulus over the past 100 years for the development of a comprehensive set of methods for predicting the population dynamics of fish. The literature on the topic has grown rapidly so that now there is a large body of theory on which fisheries managers can draw. Over the past few years several books have been published that describe aspects of this corpus at a variety of levels. On the one hand, there are introductory texts such as the one by King (1995) and, on the other hand, advanced books such as Hilborn and Walters (1992). None that I know of are as comprehensive as the new book Quantitative Fish Dynamics by Quinn and Deriso. This book is destined to become a source book for the next few decades. The authors report in the Preface that they set out to ‘‘... present all rigorous methods and models found in the literature and to include a large number of references, many of which cite other important work’’. They also ‘‘... attempt to list assumptions and present a rigorous development of each approach, to illustrate the approach with an example, and to discuss limitations and advantages’’. But to be able to take advantage of the material presented the authors assume that their readers have studied calculus for at least one year, have a year’s work behind them on applied statistics and have familiarity with PCs, can handle spreadsheets and write macros. This means that the book will be of most use to graduate students who are specialising in the field of fish population dynamics and to professionals who need to either look up specifics of a method or to obtain a rigorous overview of the field.
Quantitative Fish Dynamics is divided into eleven chapters which start with relatively
simple models and progress to the harder material. The chapters are:
