Posted by Jon Davies on March 20, 2001 at 22:31:45:
In Reply to: Oops! I missed the footnote! O.k., now how about White Sea Bass? posted by JStone on March 20, 2001 at 22:02:34:
I've always thought that the omission of the WSB from Paul Humann's book is an inexplicable and glaring oversight from an otherwise excellent book.
Hopefully, he'll fix it if he brings out a second edition.
What's even more strange is that marine biologist Milton Love does the same thing in Probably More Than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast (at least in the first edition, which I have). And Marty Snyderman has only a passing reference to WSB in his book California Marine Life.
Otherwise, both books have their strong points. Love's descriptions are very detailed and although the illustrations are only line drawings, they are useful for identification purposes. Snyderman's book is useful for its arrangement of species by habitat and explanation of their interactions.
You can't touch Humann's book for ID photos, though.
In short, I don't know of any ID book that adequately covers the white sea bass.
It's a rare treat to see them, especially on scuba, since they're very skittish. I saw a pretty large school once, but they bolted when my fins accidentally knocked together.