What The Heck is That? Or How Do I Find Out What That Strange Fish Is Called?

 

Okay, So I Don't Know The Name Of The Fish. But! Don't Call Me Stupid

It's a common problem. There you are happily playing about in the water with your new all-singing, all-dancing underwater camera when you catch sight of an exotic marine dweller. You snap away madly and are pleasantly surprised to find that one of the twenty images you’ve taken is actually in focus and captures that exotic specimen in all its glory. Now, you want to show this brilliant picture to other people, you want to explain how, in order to get that perfect shot you had to learn all about apertures, lenses, white balance, strobes, up-lighting, down-lighting, ISO, filters and well, just about everything. But no matter how expert in the field of underwater snapology you sound, you know that someone is going to ask you those killer questions. What is it that you've actually photographed? What's it called?

Clearly, if you've bored everyone to death about the finer points of underwater photography but have no idea what the yellow fish in the photograph is actually called, you're going to look a complete spoon! Worse still, concerned about your lack of knowledge in marine life identification, someone might begin to challenge your photography knowledge as well. Which of course means that you going to have to admit that your new camera does everything for you at the click of a button and your only real role in capturing that brilliant image was to make sure that the lens cap was off and the camera was pointing in the right direction.

In normal circumstances this is a disastrous situation but in the pub with your mates, where such expertise is normally spouted, this can easily become social Armageddon. Before you know it you've gone from the David Bailey of the underwater world to Nobby-no-mates faster than you can say “mine's a pint”. So how do you avoid this horny dilemma. Well, years ago, if you wanted to know the name of every fish in the sea and be capable of telling the difference between a Gastropod and a Cephalopod, you had to become a marine biologist. This meant spending an awful lot of time sitting in stuffy lecture halls and worse still, having to talk to sociology students in the University bar. Neither activity can be called interesting and of course it took three years and who has the time for that? After all, you've got 500 friends, you've never actually met, on facebook and they need to be kept up to date with what you had for breakfast this morning. Fortunately we now live in a wonderful cyber-age where if you don't know anything about anything you can still appear to be the font of all knowledge by simply pulling whatever Internet enabled device you have from your pocket, holding it high in the air and shouting, “I'll google it”.

Obviously, if you do this, you'll find there are a whole host of resources available to you via the Internet but how useful are they? Firstly the most comprehensive and authoritative site on the web is the World Register of Marine Species or WoRMS for short. The aim of WoRMS is to provide an authoritative list of names for all marine species globally and is primarily aimed at experts (real ones, not those you meet down the pub) who want to identify and catalogue every marine creature that exists or existed for that matter. To use this site you really do need to have a solid foundation in the field and you'll also need to have a masters degree in Latin just to know how to use the search feature. Not that useful then for those of us who want to know what that yellow fish is in our photograph. 

If you live in the UK there is the British Marine life site run by photographer Jason Gregory. This site has some excellent image files and a search feature is available, however the use of Latin in the description without the common and garden names means that although interesting, this site is not going to be of much use to you. Saying that it's a picture of Piscus Yellocus Finnius to your mates is always going to illicit the response “yeah but what does that mean”? Answering “yellow fish” is not going to improve things either. Fortunately other individuals have decided that they don't know Latin either and have created sites that use common names. There is Jason Flower's (why are they all called Jason?) Mediterranean marine life ID. This site is, as the name suggests, specific to the Mediterranean and has a limited number of pictures but does provide a reasonable starting point for those looking for the name of that critter they snapped off the coast of the Greek Islands etc. Another area specific site is the excellent Snorkel St John which covers the Virgin Islands but obviously is a good resource for the whole Caribbean. The site uses common names and currently has 5000 photographs broken down into easy to navigate galleries. For Hawaii and the pacific region there is the Marine Life Photography site run by Keoki and Yuko Stender. Although the site does concentrate on the species indigenous to the pacific it also has a number of galleries that feature species from other areas. The Galleries are easy to navigate and both Latin and common names are used. This is a superb site and has a huge number of images of fish, coral and other marine life and is well worth a look.

Of course not all of us have the time to leave our facebook page and go searching through all those location specific sites. So are there any comprehensive sites that cover the world? Well, thankfully there are. First there is the What's That Fish site. This is a huge site that allows you to search by colour, species or region. Galleries can also be searched alphabetically although this isn't very helpful if you don't know the bloody critters name in the first place. This is a community based site where anyone can join and upload their photographs to get the information they need. The galleries are fairly comprehensive and the site provides some interesting background information on individual species. There are a few issues though. The site is a little cumbersome and navigation is quite poor which makes it rather irritating to use. There also seem to be a lot of poor quality images on the site which doesn't make identification easy.

Fortunately though, there is another site. ReefID is the brainchild of the guys at the Underwater Photography Guide online magazine and they have hit upon the idea of making the process of searching the images as easy as possible. Which is nice. You start by searching the region, then by whether the critter you want to find is either a fish, an invertebrate or a mammal. Then you are presented with sub menus in each category. In the fish category for instance, you continue your search based on whether the fish is flat, slender or standard bodied etc. Results can then be filtered by colour, size, markings or all three. This is also a community based site that relies on members to upload their own pictures and as it has only been up and running for a year it is hardly comprehensive. However the simple navigation and the ability to filter by specifics means that as more and more pictures are added this will almost certainly become one of the best ID sites on the web. If you haven't joined ReefID we recommend you do and get uploading.

Of course there are other ways of identifying those exotic creatures you might come across beneath the waves. You could buy a book for instance and do some background reading before you actually visit the snorkelling or dive location. That way you'll know exactly what you've seen when you see it. This is also a good way of knowing what can be harmful to you before you find yourself screaming in pain and trying to access the web from a deserted beach in order find out what to do when an orange slimy thing stings you. Preparation, preparation, preparation really is the key here. Another way is to go and buy some simple Hinchcliffe marine identification slates which you can carry with you. These are region/ocean specific cards that show between 40-50 of the most common species in the location and are relatively inexpensive. Most good dive and snorkelling stores always have a good selection of these or you can get them online.

So there you have it. Now you'll never have to worry about not knowing the name of that fish, you saw and photographed, ever again. And, your mates will once more think of you as the local Jacques Cousteau and start buying you beers again....

You're welcome.