Fishes of the Eastern Mediterranean is the newest and most comprehensive guide to all known fish species of this important region. The Eastern Mediterranean is a dynamic marine environment due to the many migrant species invading the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. This book includes over 470 species, migrant and indigenous, of all habitats from tidal pools to deepwater. Both amateur fish enthusiasts and scientists will find essential information on habitats and life history.

This book contains the papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Institute on "Mediterranean Marine Ecosystems", held at Heraklion-Crete, Greece, from September 23-27, 1983. A workshop rather than a conference, it was sponsored by the Eco-Sciences Special Programme Panel, in cooperation with the Marine Science Panel. The third of its kind, it was scheduled in the framework of a project on a multidisciplinary integrated approach to the study of the Mediterranean. This Sea and the surrounding land was not only the cradle of many civilizations but is, up to the present time, one of the major world areas of marine traffic, communication and exchanges, fisheries and aquacultures, inshore human activities and ••• pollu tion. To a certain degree it constitutes a gigantic natural labo ratory, where the fate of threatened aquatic and terrestrial eco systems including the human one, is tested. The Mediterranean Sea, with its geological history and present day geographic, hydrological and climatic conditions is believed to form an ecological entity. Important exchanges and mutual influences take place with the surrounding land area and the water masses, naturally (Atlantic, Black Sea) or artificially (Red Sea), connected to the Mediterranean. Therefore, a better and in-depth knowledge of the various ecosystems, benthic, planktonic and nektonic, neritic or pelagic, in the Western or the Eastern Basin seems to be a pre requisite to any action in preserving, upgrading and managing the natural resources of the area.

Richly illustrated, backed-up by an abundance of maps and bibliographic references, this entirely revised Atlas presents the current geography, biology, mode of introduction, distinct taxonomic characteristics of 188 exotic fishes that have reached the Mediterranean since the piercing of the Suez Canal. A majority of these species (107) are new to the 2nd edition, having reached the Basin in the last twenty years, from both the Indo-Pacific region and the tropical Atlantic. The reader will find as well a description of 88 additional taxa that are often (mistakenly) listed as exotic in the scientific literature.