Photographic exploration of the tidepools of the Pacific coast, from Baja California to as far north as southeast Alaska. The photographs portray the diversity of life along one of the world's most spectacular coastlines. Accompanying text and captions describe signs of ecological relationships and processes, helping the seashore explorer to appreciate ecological interactions and their consequences. The text delves into the roles of competition, predation, reproduction, natural variation in space and time, and colour that characterize this ecosystem.
Preface, by Robert T. Paine Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 Competition: The Struggle for Limited Resources 3 Predation 4 Reproduction and Settlement on the Shore 5 The Role of Color 6 Nature's Variability: Understanding the Changing Patterns, Conserving the Species Appendix A: Planning Your Visit to the Tidepools Appendix B: Classifying Animals and Plants Further Reading Photograph Locations and Dates Index
Anne Wertheim Rosenfeld is a photographer and writer whose work has appeared in the magazines Oceans and Geo and in books by Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough. Her work has also been exhibited in a number of places, including the Oakland Museum. Robert T. Paine is Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Washington.
The photographs we see [here] are at times nearly incandescent...and consistently engaging. The book also touches on the effects of wave action and the role of natural (and man-made) disturbances in the changing ecology on this varied and narrow arena.-Christian Science Monitor; "The photographs do an unusually good job of depicting broad biological concepts."-Library Journal