The Southern Surfcaster will increase your knowledge of fishing and help you develop into a more confident salt-water fisherman. Explore creative techniques and the latest strategies that have transformed the sport over the last decade. Many of the old-school methods of fishing are updated for modern practicality. The Southern Surfcaster will change the way you think and what you thought you knew about salt water fishing.

Discover the astonishing truth about our aquatic cousins: how they think and what they know, their experiences and unique behaviours, and the many things we have in common. There are 33,000 species of fish on our planet, and that number is constantly increasing. In context, that is more than all the species of mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles added together, making fish the most numerous vertebrates on our planet. Waters worldwide are teeming with these elusive creatures, but how much do we really know about them? Grouped into thematic chapters - including the Dangerous and Deadly,Unusual Giants and Mini Marvels - in this comprehensive book biologist Doug Mackay-Hope profiles the secret lives of 50 of our most interesting underwater cousins in an insightful and myth-busting study, complete with charming watercolour diagrams and expert insights. Learn about the White-Spotted Pufferfish, whose spines hide a deadly toxin, or the Ocellate River Stingray, who lurks in the rivers of South America and who can kill with just one touch of it's barbed stinger. Meet Bargibant's Pygmy Seahorse, who measures just 2cm in length, as well as the enourmous Whale Shark, which grows to around 13m in length. Be fascinated by the wierd creatures of the deep ocean, such as the Peter's Elephantnosed Fish or the kaleidescopic Picasso's Triggerfish. With a foreword by Jeremy Wade, presenter of River Monsters and Mighty Rivers, and official fish aficionado, this book is a complete compendium of fascinating fish facts, with maps showing where in the globe they can be found, plus facts on how they live, hunt and escape predators. Beautiful illustrations and photographs accompany each entry, as well as interesting facts on how they evolved to adapt tochanging environments, making this book the perfect guide to all things aquatic.

’I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream. Actually, I can’t remember us speaking at all. Maybe because we never did.’

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it’s born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe – a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water. It lives a solitary life, hiding from both light and science, for ten, twenty, fifty years, before migrating back to the sea in the autumn, morphing into a silver eel and swimming all the way back to the Sargasso Sea, where it breeds and dies.

And yet . . . There is still so much we don’t know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel’s metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don’t know exactly why.

What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us.

This is the basis for The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson’s quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature.

Through the exploration of eels in literature (Günter Grass and Graham Swift feature, amongst others) and the history of science (we learn about Aristotle’s and Sigmund Freud’s complicated relationships with eels) as well as modern marine biology (Rachel Carson and others) we get to know this peculiar animal. In this exploration, we also learn about the human condition, life and death, through natural science and nature writing at its very best.