With all of the passion of one of those steamy bodice rippers you used to insert inside the cover of Physics for the Inertially Challenged and read during class; with all the wit you have come to fear from these three authors whose only commonality is that they are all carbon-based life forms; and with all of those small spines on the lower margin of the suborbital bone that so typifies this group, Rockfishes of the Northeast Pacific is a gut-wrenching, stomach-turning, intestine-scrunching and pancreas-poking roller coaster of emotions that will turn your world (such as it is) inside out.

It’s 405 pages of facts, fun, fotos, fiduciary and several other words that start with “F”. Oh, and we have also included a ton of rockfish art.

The book is available from the University of California Press, (800) 777-4726 http://www.ucpress.edu/press/, local book sellers who desperately need your business, amazon.com and all purveyors who love and respect great literature and are willing to somewhat stretch a point. No matter where you purchase it, it should run you no more than $25 plus shipping and the word on the Street is that you can buy it for substantially less than that. None of the authors are getting royalties for this monster, so buy two, it’s okay.

Now that the rockfish book is finished, we are reminded of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (and, by the way, what’s with the “Bysshe”?).

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sand stretch far away.

Of course, to put it in perspective, everything in our lives reminds us of Ozymandias.

Since 1995, our group, first funded by the Biological Resources Division of the U. S. Geological Survey, the Minerals Management Service and most recently by the California Artificial Reef Enhancement Program, has conducted research on the fishes that live around the platforms and on natural rock outcrops of central and southern California. Our goals have been to determine the patterns of fish assemblages around both platforms and outcrops and what processes may have generated these patterns. In addition, we are attempting to understand the linkages between habitats among different fish life history stages.

Here we present a synthesis of the research we conducted between 1995 and 2001.

Want to read the report?