News Notes 
A Handbook of Hawaiian Fishes, written by 
William A. Gosline and Vernon E. Brock, has 
just been published by the University of Hawaii 
Press. It is the first work since that of Jordan 
and Evermann in 1905 to give the information 
needed for the identification of all of the inshore 
species of fishes recognized from the Hawaiian 
Islands and their adjacent waters. As such, it is 
a complex and important undertaking, which 
has been carefully prepared by its authors and 
handsomely printed by the University of Hawaii 
Press. It will be of value not only to ichthy- 
ologists but to anyone whose interest in Hawaii’s 
fishes extends to the point of wanting to learn 
which ones they are. Teachers of marine biology, 
commercial fishermen confronted with unfa- 
miliar specimens in their hauls, biostatisticians, 
law-enforcement agents, students, and plain 
people who wish to be knowledgeable about 
their catches, all will find this Handbook both 
useful and instructive. 
No book can make ichthyology easy, but this 
one makes the fundamentals of the science easier 
to acquire than would most texts upon the sub- 
ject. It avoids the almost unintelligible language 
of the specialists, using instead a sensible in- 
formal style which is both descriptive and re- 
liable. The result is a work that makes taxonomy, 
as the authors intended it to be, "as painless as 
possible,” without sacrificing either accuracy or 
the details of systematics. 
In its 371 pages, the Handbook presents all 
of the information needed for the identification 
of 584 species of native Hawaiian fishes, to- 
gether with 15 species that are not yet known 
north of Johnston Island, and about 30 others 
that have been intentionally introduced to the 
Hawaiian Islands. When it is known, the com- 
mon name generally applied to a fish in Hawaii 
is listed with the scientific name of that fish. 
The relationships of the deep-water forms, of 
which 136 are discussed in the Handbook, are 
still too little known to permit a lasting classifi- 
cation, and, wisely, the authors carry their ac- 
counts of these fishes "only to the family level.” 
All of the 448 forms of inshore or surface-living 
fishes are keyed to species, however, and for each 
of these a short description is given. Five color 
plates, two large end-paper maps of the Indo- 
Pacific area, and 277 elegant line drawings illus- 
trate the book. 
Almost as important as the taxonomic por- 
tions are the introductory chapters which discuss 
the history of ichthyological research in the cen- 
tral Pacific, especially in Hawaii; the ecology of 
Hawaiian fishes (with some pertinent notes on 
fish populations and productivity ) ; and the 
nature and derivation of the Hawaiian fish fauna. 
These chapters offer definitive, if brief, sum- 
mations of all the information concerning 
Hawaiian fishes that has been gathered by bio- 
logists working in the immense area of the Indo- 
Pacific. The book concludes with both an index 
and an annotated checklist of the native Hawaii 
fishes. 
The authors come well qualified to their 
service as writers of this book. William A. Gos- 
line has been a Professor of Zoology at the 
University of Hawaii since 1948. Vernon E. 
Brock, since February, 1959, Director of the 
Hawaii Area Office of the U. S. Department of 
Interior’s Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (for- 
merly known as POFI), was Director of the 
Division of Fish and Game for the Territory of 
Hawaii from 1944 to 1958. Their colleagues 
and students have helped them to perfect the 
many keys which now find a place in the Hand- 
book; and, in a collaboration that is as pleasing 
to the observer as it must be gratifying to them- 
selves, three of their former students have 
contributed sections to the taxonomic treatment 
of the fishes upon which they have become 
authorities: Yoshio Yamaguchi wrote the sec- 
tion on the Carangidae; John E. Randall, that 
on the Acanthuridae; and Donald W. Strasburg, 
that on the blennioid fishes. 
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