This latest edition of the classic reference work was fifteen years in the making and has drawn from a larger base of information than previous editions.
According to the publisher, Smithsonian Institution Press, “Thirty-eight experts in fisheries biology and ichthyology clearly distill the enormous amount of knowledge gained during the past fifty years, including distribution figures from thirty years of annual trawl surveys; food habits accounts from surveys of the stomach contents of more than 30,000 fishes; and egg distribution data from a survey exceeding 10,000 samples.”
The original reference work was written by Henry B. Bigelow (1879-1967) and William C. Schroeder (1895-1977). The founding director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Bigelow was a pioneering ocean researcher whose extensive investigations in the early part of the twentieth century were later recognized as the foundation of modern oceanography. Schroeder was widely considered the world’s expert on skates, rays, and sharks.
Klein-MacPhee, a resident of Narragansett, received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Boston University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island. In addition to her work at GSO, Klein-MacPhee also serves as an adjunct professor in URIs Department of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Veterinary Sciences. She specializes in the biology and ecology of flatfishes, especially winter and summer flounder, and in the early life history of Northwest Atlantic fishes. She is currently conducting an ichthyoplankton survey with RIDEM in Narragansett Bay to characterize species composition, abundance, and distribution with an emphasis on commercially important species; a fish survey in the Blackstone River for Ocean State Power; and a study of the interactions between gelatinous zooplankton and early life stages of fishes in Narragansett Bay, with Dr. Barbara Sullivan, for Rhode Island Sea Grant. She is a member of the American Fisheries Society, the Fisheries Society of the British Isles, the Estuarine Research Federation, and the Rhode Island Natural History Survey. She recently was awarded the 2002 Rhode Island Natural History Society (RINHS) Distinguished Naturalist Award.
Collette is the senior scientist for the NMFS National Systematics Laboratory in Washington, DC. He works at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History where he and his colleagues focus their research primarily on commercially important fishes.
Bigelow and Schroeder’s Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, Third Edition, will be available for purchase in June 2002 at area bookstores. The book can be preordered through amazon.com.
Contact: Lisa Cugini, (401) 874-6642, lcugini@gso.uri.edu