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Rating: 
Summary: This is a fascinating read
Review: This is a very slim book for the price, but it is packed with data and insight gained over years of research into the natural history of the large predatory catfish in the Amazon basin. This is frontier fisheries biology. Some of the discoveries revealed in this book say as much about the Amazon as it does about the fish themselves.I would have preferred that they had eschewed the use of the local common names in favor of the scientific names as it can be confusing. For example when they refer to Sorubim, they don't mean Sorubim lima nor do they mean Sorubimichthys planiceps or even Hemisorubim platyrhynchus. They are referring to what American aquarists call the Tiger Shovelnose: Pseudoplatystoma fasciatum. There is a chapter covering the names and information about each fish to help out when such confusion arises. The chapter includes some great photographs of some of the largest specimens compared to the size of people, but it is unfortunate that all the photos are in black and white. It would have been particularly nice to have had color photos of the specimens of Merodontodus tigrinus and Brachyplatystoma juruense shown in the black and white photos. One of the surprising revelations in this book is that while these catfish eat just about anything that moves, they seem to have a preference for Prochilodins. It seems that there are other very similar prey items (such as Leporinus spp.) that would serve just as well as Prochilodins. This book would have been very helpful to me when I was majoring in fisheries biology and was primarily interested in aquaculture and viewing with disdain the put-and-take approach to fisheries required of the local government to maintain fishing sites for the "sportsmen". I'd have been much more interested in the wildlife aspect of the discipline if I'd had this book. Overall this was an incredibly fascinating book for the little gems of knowledge that are revealed by the data that the authors collected.
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