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Dan H. Ryan, Published [No date: circa 1958]. Wraps, 30 pp.; 24 cm; staple bound; no publisher, place, or date printed; 24 color photographs, one to each subject, and a double-page tidal-zone map in blue duotone with species located on the photograph; table of contents; references.
In Very Good condition. Pale cream pictorial wraps (a moray eel on front, rear blank) with toning, light soiling and mild shelf wear, light creasing at corners. Staples tight. Pages toned, otherwise unmarked. Self-published field guide to the tide pools and kelp beds of Southern California, photographed underwater in color by a skin diver in the 1950s, when the equipment was a face plate, fins, and a homemade watertight camera case (the case is photographed on p. 23). Ryan learned to dive and to photograph from Conrad Limbaugh, the first diving officer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography; the text was reviewed by Carl Hubbs of Scripps and by G. E. and Nettie MacGinitie of Caltech's Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory, and the interviews include Kenneth Norris, then curator at Marineland of the Pacific, and Sam Hinton of the Scripps aquarium. Each subject gets a photograph and a paragraph on habits, range, and legal take: moray eel, green, red, and black abalone, sea cucumber, octopus, chiton, bat star, sea anemone, giant sea cradle, sea slug, sunflower star, kelp bass, nudibranch, tide pool sculpin, leather star, sea hare, black keyhole limpet, sea urchin, spiny star, spiny lobster, garibaldi, and California sargo, with a page on collecting equipment and methods. Also issued in hardcover; this is the wraps issue.