Good general book on reef life?

I've been thinking of buying myself a reef flora and fauna ID book.

I don't want to buy Debelius guides, as they are too expensive and are singly specific on sharks, fish, nudies and so on, I would need to bring a whole library with me.

I saw this one at Male airport: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...002-9195901-9149661?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

didn't buy it because I thought 48US$ was outrageous, I see Amazon has it for slightly less and I may even be able to buy it used.

Any comments on its worth?

Any other decent alternative (in one book)?

I hear Humann's books are very good and a lot of people I talked to recommend them. They're a bit more reasonable $$-wise as well.

-Roman.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...5060258/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-1111544-2612631

I have the Allen/Steene book you've linked to and so do many people around here (SE Asia). For this region, it seems to be the only reasonably priced book that has corals and invertebrates as well as fish. The downside is that it's just photographs and names, with very little other information.

For fish I also have this book, which has paintings rather than photos and has a few lines of information about each fish. I find that useful -- if it says fish x is only found in shallow seagrass near one particular island and you were at 20m in some other place, you know you saw something else. One frustration is that although both books are by Gerry Allen, they use different common names for many fish.

AFAIK Paul Humann's books are for the Caribbean.

Hope that helps,


Zept

What about this one? Indo-Pacific Corals and fish

Roman...Humann has books on the Galapogos and one other place in the pacific but I didn't see it.