kells-westAs regular readers of The Well-read Naturalist well know, it all began long ago with a curious young boy and an old library copy of the Herbert Spencer Zim’s Fishes: A Guide to Fresh and Salt-water Species. Therefore, whenever a new field guide to fish is published (which doesn’t happen all that often) I immediately take notice.

Recently, such immediate notice was indeed taken when an advance copy of A Field Guide to Coastal Fishes from Alaska to California by Val Kells, Luiz A. Rocha, and Larry G. Allen arrived on my desk from Johns Hopkins University Press.

Expect a full review of this book very soon but in the meantime the website for it and other works by its team of authors is well worth visiting.