Help support everyone's favorite fish nerd by buying some of his pretty photos and [...]
GEORGE SHAW'S PISCES (1803) - THE BROAD FINNED ACANTHURUS (detail) Over the years, I’ve written about several important names in the history of ichthyology. Some were enthusiastic amateur naturalists, like the early pioneers Albertus Seba and Samuel Fallours, and others were diligent [...]
Bandtail Pufferfish (Sphoeroides spengleri) Bernard Germain de Lacépède is one of the true founding fathers of ichthyology, and his magnum opus, Histoire Naturelle des Poissons (Natural History of Fishes), is arguably the first great work to discuss and illustrate coral reef fishes. In this [...]
The 19th century was a golden age for marine exploration and ichthyological discovery, and a majority of the coral reef fishes familiar to us today were first described during these formative years. To fully convey to a curious public the vibrant colors and ornate patterning of these new species, [...]
Not all of these illustrations lend themselves to easy identification. Because of this judicious use of artistic license and the general unfamiliarity an early 18th-century Dutchman would have had regarding the reef fishes of Indonesia, an effort had to be made on the part of Renard to verify [...]
The Imperator Angelfish. Fallours accurately depicts the Pacific Ocean form, with its threadlike extension of the dorsal fin. The illustrations featured in this article represent the earliest color images of Indo-Pacific coral reef fishes ever to be printed. They originate from a compendium on [...]
Bloch was the first to scientifically describe and illustrate the familiar Imperator Angelfish. The study of coral reef fishes is a relatively recent field within ichthyology. The earliest scientific works, by naturalists such as Artedi, Linnaeus and Forsskål, consisted of little more than a [...]
