Florida Collecting Guide a review

Table of Contents. I'm not going to go through this Table of Contents because I'm going to go through the whole thing. This is the preface, which explains the background and why this book was started and what its origins are. It talks about Florida's water resources, the lakes and retention ponds, some of the streams and rivers. swamps and wetlands, springs and spring runs, and then this section two is on collecting Florida fishes. Here we have some people, a picture of some people collecting using a seine, and a picture of the Santa Fe River, some of the bank habitats. What a beautiful river. Florida, collecting Florida fishes, state laws, regulations, rules applying to listed species and so for lots and lots of detail talks about how one to one what one's behavior in the habitat should be returning fish to the wild general collecting guidelines and here are details on guidelines covering safety what to wear collecting nets, seine nets, dip nets, and so forth and so on. Just lots of detail on collecting, evaluating a collecting site, the feasibility of collecting, and then vegetation and how to deal with various kinds of vegetation. Collecting at banks, sandbars, obstructions, boat ramps, habitat photos here showing some of the places where people actually collect under bridges, along ditches running alongside roads, and roadside ponds. there's so many beautiful places to collect in in Florida just amazing and this is primarily freshwater although this is a picture of collecting off the skyway bridge so these are saltwater collectors field maintenance how to keep your your gear how to keep your fish alive gear to use containers filters on and on and on how to set up your trunk the back of your vehicle so that you can keep stuff going and then it discusses the the various seasons the wet season the dry season, the four areas of Florida this is covered, the book is kind of broken down into these four areas, the Panhandle, Northern Region, Central Region, and Southern Region. Time of the year to collect, focusing primarily on the summer months. Collecting site and species data, and this says Section 3 is the most expensive, extensive. It covers all the collecting sites and species, data on species. This explains how the collecting site data is organized. And then we get into enormous detail here on collecting site and species summaries, giving the latitude and longitude, the location, and the species collected at those locations, with references to a map which is at the back of this section. Detail after detail, all of the native and invasive species found in Florida waters. Enormous detail. This is all by location. So these are many good collecting locations all throughout here, page after page after page of collecting locations, the species that are available at those locations. here's a wonderful picture of an area that snorkeling is very effective in and we can see that there, it is great picture and then then we have the maps and the maps cover again the four regions, let this spread out you can see it the four regions of Florida, this is the Gulf of Mexico the Panhandle, then the Atlantic, which is kind of the central region, and the Gulf of Mexico. And of course, there are zones for each of these, which correspond to the charts that we were just looking at. Species location list. So now we have a list of animals by species running along the top and where they can be found on these maps. So an enormous amount of detail on all of the many species of fish. Each column is a different species of fish, corresponding to a map and locations on those maps. So literally hundreds of species are listed here, page after page of species where they can be collected okay and then the next section is uh this is an interesting graph of the rivers the surface rivers of Florida from all the way up into the panhandle all the way down which goes up into Alabama and Georgia because it it traces the rivers up the next section four is habitat and collecting method review by genus of Florida native fish and it carries it covers all of the uh the genuses of fish native fish native Florida fish not suitable for aquariums such as the American eel the white catfish the Florida gar and so forth maintaining Florida native fish talks about the conditions that are that are helpful to be able to keep them the pH range the water cold temperature status the size of the fish and so forth and these are all by species so here are all the fundulids for example the the gambusia, the hytherandria, and so forth. There's a spawning review explaining how many of these fish spawn. And this is all detail on spawning of the various species and families of fish. Florida's exotic fish. So these are a list of those fish that are non-native, but nonetheless found in Florida as essentially invasive species. And there are many of them, pages of those. Let's see now. This is regionally established populations of non-native fish. Is it just non-native? It looks like it. Mayan cichlids, clown knifefish, tilapia, yes, that's what this is. This is established populations of non-native fish, where they're located, and so forth, on the maps. And collectors are encouraged to collect these non-natives and dispose of them as they see fit without returning them. The dichotomous ID kit, a key, ID key to native freshwater fishes of Peninsula, Florida. And Dr. Burgess, Department of Ichthyology, Florida Museum of Natural History, note that the identified species are the next step to go to appear in bold at the end of each numbered key. So the bowfin, for example, Calvus bowfin, describes the morphology of each of these species of fish. the rays the body shape and size and so forth the pickerel the pirate perch and on and on giving a scientific description of each of these species in order to be able to to do a field study a field species determination and on it goes here's the Oka Funoki pygmy sunfish One of my favorites, the Elasoma species, and explains in detail how they are described scientifically. It's more of the same kind of information, and it goes on and on. Here's identification matrix for Elasoma species in Florida. The Elasoma is my all-time favorite of the little ornamentals in Florida. Here's one on the goodii, Lucania goodii, habitat collecting and so forth. All kinds of detail, aquarium environment, feeding, breeding. This is all just goodii, artificial egg incubation, natural egg incubation. And then a description of the color, the anal fin color variations in populations of Lucania goodii, the bluefin killifish among them. These are, and this is location populations of those fish in Florida. Section five, species photos. This is the part that's most exciting for everybody. This is the photo key. And then we get into pictures of all these guys. This is a fish that I've been spawning here at Father Fish. It's the pupfish. The, there's the Lake Eustis pupfish, the Sheepshead Minnow, this is the one I've been working with, the Sheepshead Minnow, which is a saltwater to brackish water, I'm breeding them in freshwater, hard alkaline freshwater to be sure. more of the same gold spotted killifish and then all of the the Fundulus, the wonderful Fundulus this with it the miracle of colors and patterns and and variety so all of these the mummichog the the minnows the Fundulus heteroclitus The similis, the Zenicus, this is a beautiful little fish. The Fundulus similis, which I caught in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland as a child. The Florida flagfish, which is a Jordanella, and so forth and so on. And just page, page after page after page of all of the Florida natives. This is the Yellow Soma evergladii. This is the one I was describing as one of my absolute favorites. Beautiful little fish. Here's some more of them. A little better picture of them. They're tiny, less than an inch long. The ornamental sunfish, banded sunfish, and so forth. Pictures of all of these beautiful native species, page after page after page in detail. These are the darters, which I've caught in large numbers here in the swamp darter, particularly the Etheostoma fusiforme, which is a fish that's very common here locally in Sarasota. I know where to collect them by the hundreds. The live bearers, these are the Heterandria formosa, the least killifish. Just a delightful little, tiny little fish that's so easy to keep and so interesting. These are the Florida mollies. And then non-native fishes, a large section on the non-natives. more non-natives exotic species like the cichlids page after page of non-native species the plecostomus which are all over everywhere in Florida the ballanopsis which I thought for a long time was a native it's not it's also called a pike killifish they're native to Mexico. Florida native plants. There's a large section at the back of the book on plants. All kinds of details about plants. How to collect them. How to keep them. Where to find them. And then a photo list of plants. Here's the various Ludwigia located in a body of water here in Florida. Beautiful bog plants. lots of bog plants in Florida so pages this is the um spider lily whoops i grow these here locally and in my tanks the mosquito fern azolla on and on pennywort hornwort water moss hydrilla duckweed spongewort bog seed box page after page of all of the local all the Florida plants there's crystal of wort. And then the suggested readings and let's see pictures of these. They're really quite nice. Suggested readings and the index. This is the index of the entire book. So there you have it. There's an order form at the back of the book. I'm going to be talking to the guys about trying to get this republished. They are discussing again we need to get um need to make it worthwhile so that it's not such a struggle with them selling but i think that's not going to be quite the issue so there's the overview of the florida collecting guide there we go sorry about the terrible camera work i'm sitting here holding it by hand so maybe you've got a little bit of a sense of what the guide is all about thanks for paying attention and hanging in there with me. I did want to do this. There have been a couple of requests for me to review the guide, so I'm happy to do that. I'll try to get this published right away. Thank you. Good to see you all. Father Fish, until next time. Bye for now.