Handbook of the Marine Fauna of North-West Europe (2nd edition)

It is over 20 years since the first edition of this book was published. It covers the area from the Western continental shelf off Ireland to mainland Europe. The organisms are the macrofauna, which leaves out plankton and the meiofauna, roughly anything that will pass through a 1-mm mesh (a Wikipedia definition). At the other end of the scale, it excludes birds and sea mammals on the grounds that they have a good literature of their own. That leaves very many animals which are dealt with in 12 chapters.

The book begins with a detailed account of the North-West European...