Eye of the Shoal: A Fishwatcher's Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything

by Helen Scales

Overview

"A sprawling, ambitious underwater journey studded with fascinating tidbits." - New York Times Book Review

Wild fish hover in seas, rivers and lakes, out of sight and out of mind. But from the very first time Helen Scales immersed herself into their liquid world, she realized that fish are beautiful, mesmerizing, complex and exciting. The moment she sank down to eyeball a wild trout—the fish poised in front of her, expertly occupying the three-dimensional space in a way that she could only dream of imitating—sparked the ichthyologist within, and set in motion years of study and exploration in the fishes' unseen domain as she became a devoted fish-watcher.

In this book, Scales shares the secrets of fish, unhitching them from their reputation as cold, unknowable beasts and reinventing them as clever, emotional, singing, thoughtful creatures, and challenging readers to rethink these animals. She takes readers on an underwater journey to watch these creatures going about the hidden but glorious business of being a fish. Their way of life is radically different from our own, in part because they inhabit a buoyant, sticky fluid in which light, heat, gases and sound behave in odd ways. They've evolved many tactics to overcome these challenges, to become megastars of the life sun-aquatic. In doing so, these extraordinary animals tell us so much about the oceans and life itself. Our relationship with these scaly creatures goes much deeper than predator versus prey. Fish leave their mark on the human world.

As well as being a rich and entertaining read, this book will inspire readers to think again about these animals, and the seas, and to go out and appreciate the wildness and wonders of fish, whether through the glass walls of an aquarium or, better still, by gazing into the fishes' wild world and swimming through it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472936820
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	06/30/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,077,500
Product dimensions:	5.05(w) x 7.85(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Helen Scales is a marine biologist, diver, surfer, broadcaster and writer who's spent hundreds of hours underwater watching fish. A familiar voice for the oceans, she's pondered the mysteries of the deep sea with Robin Ince and Brian Cox on BBC Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage and donated an imaginary tank of seahorses to The Museum of Curiosity. She's a regular writer for BBC Focus and BBC Wildlife magazines. Among her radio documentaries she's explored the dream of living underwater and followed the trail of endangered snails around the world and back again.

Helen's recent book, Spirals in Time, is a Guardian bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Biology book prize, picked as a book of the year by The Economist, Nature, The Times and the Guardian and was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.

@helenscales / helenscales.com

Table of Contents

Prologue: The wandering ichthyologist 10

Chapter 1 Ichthyo-curiosities 27

Sedna the sea goddess 47

Chapter 2 A view from the deep - introducing the fish 49

How the flounder lost its smile 83

Chapter 3 Outrageous acts of colour 85

The salmon of knowledge 117

Chapter 4 Illuminations 119

O-namazu 141

Chapter 5 Anatomy of a shoal 143

Osiris and the elephantfish 177

Chapter 6 Fish food 179

Vatnagedda 201

Chapter 7 Toxic fish 203

Chipfalamfula 225

Chapter 8 How fish used to be 227

The Doctor of the sea 251

Chapter 9 Fish symphonies 253

The fish and the golden shoe 275

Chapter 10 (Re)thinking fish 277

Epilogue 299

Appendix: Illustration species list 302

Glossary 304

Select bibliography and Notes 306

Acknowledgements 311

Index 313

Editorial Reviews

Scales's genuine appreciation and awe for fish are contagious. She continually entices the reader by introducing exciting aspects of fish in each chapter.” —Science

“A delightful book that provides a welcome invitation to enter the amazing world of fish.” —New Scientist

“An engaging and informative bouillabaisse.” —The Economist

“A sprawling, ambitious underwater journey studded with fascinating tidbits.” —New York Times Book Review

“This aquarium of a book is an eloquent reminder of how remarkable [fish] are.” —Natural History

“Enthralling and thought-provoking” —Countryman

“Helen Scales invites us to dive below the waterline as she reveals the hidden but glorious lives of fish going about their rather fascinating business.” —Coast

“Eye of the Shoal is a book brimming with wonders. Shimmering colours, otherworldly abilities, and compelling dramas flood every page, as the masterful Helen Scales brings us eye-to-eye with the world of fishes – creatures who are at once thrillingly strange and startlingly ubiquitous. Whether you snorkel or scuba, whether you meet fish in a tank or on TV, this book is new portal to see our blue planet with new eyes, one that will make you love our world and its creatures all the more.” —Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus

“Eye of the Shoal is like a beautiful glass bottomed boat that reveals this mysterious realm with joyful passion and perfect clarity. You couldn't have a more knowledgable guide on board than Helen.” —Dallas Campbell, science broadcaster and author

“Eye of the Shoal is an absorbing account of the least understood area of our planet. Helen brings the depths to life, not only with wondrous accounts from her extensive travels, but also by introducing us to some magnificently improbable characters (both human and piscine), and by astonishing us with mind-blowing facts on every page.” —James Harkin, QI's Head Elf and presenter on the award-winning podcast 'No Such Thing as a Fish'

“This fantastic and timely book will change your perspective on your pet goldfish, a fishmonger's window display, a darting flash of silver glimpsed from a boat and the colourful world of a coral reef. A must-read for anyone interested in life on Earth.” —Helen Czerski, physicist, oceanographer and author of Storm in a Teacup

“If you already love fish wherever they swim, you'll be astonished by so many new discoveries in these pages. If you don't love fish – you surely will.'” —Carl Safina, author of The View From Lazy Point, and Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

From the Publisher

★ 05/07/2018
Popular science books don’t get much better than this accessible and eye-opening look at fish by marine biologist Scales (Spirals in Time). She peppers her prose with amusing asides, in keeping with the book’s Douglas Adamsesque subtitle, and snapshots of unusual behavior and characteristics (such as the Amazon’s Splash Tetra, whose eggs are laid on a leaf overhanging the river, requiring the father to splash them once every minute for two days to keep them moist). But this is much more than just an aquatic safari to peek at oddities; Scales provides the history of relevant zoological classifications, which initially grouped marine mammals along with fish, and the fascinating history of the scientists who studied fish, such as the 17th century English naturalist whose De Historia Piscium took away funding from Isaac Newton’s work. The most fascinating sections provide insights into the complex ways fish use color, including communicating with each other using “secret graffiti,” and into the dynamics of fish schools. Her vivid descriptions of the animals described—“a Moorish Idol hunches in a small cave, indistinct and grey, like a poorly developed image of itself”—skillfully supplement the illustrations. Fans of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries will find this a worthy prose equivalent. (June)

Publishers Weekly

2018-04-11
"The world's waters—fresh and salty, shallow and deep—are teeming with remarkable species" of fish. Marine biologist Scales (Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells, 2015, etc.) introduces readers to a remarkable array.The author has a canny approach to bringing fish to life on the page: Start with something a little fantastic—bioluminescence, for instance, or toxic fish—and then use that as a jumping-off point to build familiarity with other, less dramatic denizens of the deep. Scales opens and closes with chapters on the history of contemporary fish and ancient fish, but the meat of the book are the chapters in the middle, in which the author provides unhurried, lucid tours through fish colors, luminescence, shoaling, foods, and poisonous fish, among other topics. Some of the information reads like an episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not—"the most dangerous venomous fish are probably the stonefish, a family that disguise themselves as weedy rocks. One in particular, the Rough Stonefish, also known as the Warty Ghoul, has a row of 13 spines along its back"—but the author consistently situates the odd specimens comfortably with more familiar fish. She explains how their color is a sign of mating attraction, warning, or camouflage; the mechanics involved with bioluminescence (often triggered by agitation); the many sounds they make, including the bass-note singing of the goliath grouper and the higher-pitched tweets of the tetra, which are products of their air bladder and may well be used for communication; how shoaling clearly helps "avoid predators" and "save energy." Fish are impressively abundant and diverse—at 30,000 species, they make up one-half of all vertebrates—so Scales has a point in getting to know them better.Entertaining reading for anyone interested in the captivating underworld realm of fish.

Kirkus Reviews