Spanking-New Waterproof Coral ID Guide

Daddy likes! Thanks to a post by my friends over at Climate Shifts, I learned of a new ID guide to Indo-Pacific corals. The Coral Finder by BYO Guides is a practical, photo-driven (and best of all waterproof!) tool that makes quick work of keying-out the confusing Indo-Pacific coral diversity.

Corals in general can be maddening to field identify, even if you spend a lot of time diving on reefs. And the Indo-Pacific is home to the greatest coral diversity on the planet (over 500 species of hard coral by some counts). Sure, there are some excellent resources for identifying corals, like the three-volume Corals of the World. But these heavy volumes are expensive, a pain in the ass to haul around the world, and you always have to delay gratification in identifying mystery corals until you're topside and dry. By then, all I want to ID is a cold beer.

The 32-page Coral Finder appears to allow for rapid in situ identification of 66 of the most common hard coral genera found throughout the Indo-Pacific range. The guide breaks hard corals down into just a handful of relatively jargon-free common morphologies: branching, meandering ridges or grooves, massive or thick colonies, etc. Once you decide on a basic external anatomy and approximate size of individual coral structures, you flip to the corresponding color-coded section for a collection of genus-level corals that match this anatomy.

Granted, genus-level identification will only get you so far, considering that Acropora corals alone have over 300 identified species. But the Coral Finder doesn't leave you hanging. Once you get down to genus-level ID, the guide includes a reference to the chapter and page in Corals of the World where you can research possible species-level identification. The authors claim to get excellent and rapid results anywhere between the Red Sea and Easter Island. Bold claim, but they seem to back it up with results from their field tests in Fiji.

My one question is whether color-coding of sections might be problematic beyond 33 feet of water depth on a not particularly sunny day in the field. Beyond 33 feet, red wavelenghs of light are filtered out so red colors appear brown (or black). I presume the most common genera addressed in the guide are those that appear near the top of reefs or in relatively shallow water, so perhaps this is a moot point.

I see The Coral Finder becoming an indispensable new tool that will help in field monitoring and identification of Indo-Pacific reefs by citizen science teams or by students to build rapid familiarity with coral diversity. Recreational divers and snorkelers would also benefit from this tool. You can bet I'll be ordering a few of these for my field staff, and also taking one for a test drive on my next trip to the Pacific for field work.