Encyclopedia of Marine Life of Britain and Ireland

Edited by Bernard E. Picton and Christine C. Morrow

This photographic guide covers a selection of the larger animals which live round the coasts of Britain and Ireland. It is intended for divers and marine biologists who need to be able to recognise species in situ and is not an exhaustive identification guide. It will need to be used with other publications giving microscopic characters in many cases. It is also incomplete in coverage, with some groups covered quite thoroughly and others very incompletely. In some cases we have not yet written any text, but wish to take this opportunity to publish colour photographs of the species involved. It is our intention to add to the site as time allows.

For several of the groups the information has appeared in print in a series of guides produced by the editors and other members of the Marine Conservation Society. The authorship and sources are given below. By combining this information in a website it has been possible to make links across groups where appropriate, for instance between nudibranchs and the particular species of animals which they feed on. In addition some of the large photographs which are loaded when a user clicks on the photograph for a species are image maps, and other species in the photograph are linked to their own pages. Much of this material has already been published on the BioMar viewer CD-ROM and on the Species Directory CD-ROM (Picton & Howson, 2000), (Marine Conservation Society and Ulster Museum).

There is also a species name search facility based on the Species Directory . This is a comprehensive listing of species associated with marine habitats in Great Britain and Ireland.

For convenience of users browsing on a tablet or smartphone the large images now have hotspots; top-left returns to the text account, mid-left to previous image and mid-right to the next image.