A Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore, More than 1000 illustrations, grouped by visual similarity, show species of marine plants and animals of the Atlantic coast of North America from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Hatteras.

A Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore

This is an informal book for identifying saltwater plants and invertebrate animals. In writing it I have tried to emphasize a practical rather than a rigidly scientific approach. Wherever possible I have substituted plain language for technical jargon. Also, the arrangement of plates and the descriptive comparisons are intended to serve the untrained eye of the amateur rather than the dictates of formal systematics.

The book is also quite literally a field guide. This restriction effectively eliminates a substantial number of organisms that have to be studied with a microscope. These, in any event, are mainly of interest to specialists. The majority of amphipod crustaceans, nematode worms, and hydroid cnidarians are in this category; we shall only sample such groups and skip entirely microscopic algae, ostracods, rotifers, gastrotrichs, kinorhynchs, tardigrades, protists, and the like. Most of these also require special collecting techniques and special preparation for study.

(Omitting these forms also has the thoroughly practical benefit of bringing the book within reasonable size for publication.) I am also taking the shore part of the title to mean, quite literally, only those plants and animals that live along the edge of the sea or in wading or snorkeling depths, plus a few that are frequently cast ashore from deeper water. Geographically our nominal limits are the Bay of Fundy and Cape Hatteras, but actually the book should be useful considerably farther north and south (see p. 14).

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