Antara Kita:

Sulawesi Seas: Indonesia's Magnificent Underwater Realm. By Mike Severns and Pauline Fiene-Severns. Concord, California: Staples Ecenbarger Publishing, 1994. 160 pp., color photographs, map, index. Reviewed by Paul Michael Taylor, Smithsonian Institution.

This delightful book of masterful underwater nature photography also serves as a vivid and up-to-date biological introduction to the coral-reef fauna in the northeastern tip of Sulawesi Island's northernmost peninsula. Many of the photographs come from the Bunaken-Manado Tua National Marine Park in the Sulawesi Sea. Others come from the eastern side of the peninsula, off Bitung and especially in the Lembeh Strait (which, as only quibblers might point out, actually lie in the Moluccan Sea). It is the product of a long collaboration between underwater photographer Mike Severns and his wife Pauline Fiene-Severns, an invertebrate zoologist specializing in nudibranchs (the so-called “sea slugs” which can be so colorful precisely because they are so poisonous).

Looking like (and undoubtedly serving as) a coffee-table” book of fine photographs, the book includes a well-written introductory essay by Mike Severns, a map, 142 well-captioned, stunning color photographs (by the reviewer's count, plus 2 more color photographs, and one B&W photograph of the authors, on the dustjacket), and a single index of Latin and common names for the fauna and flora depicted. Kungkunan Bay Resort (a line drawing of which serves as a frontispiece) helped sponsor the publication, as did Garuda Indonesia Airlines.

Looking beyond the attractive, popular format of the book, however, those who actually read each paragraph-length caption will note the high quality of the biological information there, and in the identifications accompanying the photographs. The small print in the Acknowledgements provides a top-notch international list of biologists who contributed species identifications. Species are identified in tiny print, flush against the photo borders. The captions provide concise, intriguing vignettes about the behaviors and life-histories, as well as ecological adaptations and interrelationships, of the species shown. Often, to see the subject-matter of a photograph, the viewer must imitate the method originally used by the photographer: wait patiently until the unmoving animal slowly becomes visible amid the surroundings for which it is perfectly camouflaged.

The photographer's introductory essay explains his methods further, and every reader will admire his dedication in indefatigably seeking photographs in a natural setting rather than manufacturing them. This makes examples like his photograph of hatching cuttlefish (the sort usually done in a lab) all the more amazing. Yet anthropologists (who admittedly make up a tiny percentage of this book's readership) will still feel like this mostly wonderful book nevertheless arose, in one sense, in an aquarium-like setting. That is the setting of places like the National Marine Park and the expatriate-chartered diving boat which seem aquarium-like” because set down in but removed from all the surrounding social life of the people of Sulawesi. This book is still missing one important, and probably very photogenic, ingredient –an indigenous perspective on classification, interpretation, and uses of Sulawesi's underwater biota. The very few images of boats and boatmen seem intended to establish a setting for the nature photography. Yet in many cases the authors credit local people for finding unusual fauna. The pearly nautilus is one of the few animals that the photographer could not photograph in its natural setting; it had to be trapped in deep seas (by indigenous boatmen who have sold pearly nautilus shell for centuries), then released. And the authors clearly had many contacts with local sea-farers and marine resource users. They thank their Bahasa instructor and boat captain (p. 158) and Severns writes (p. 15): One of my greatest pleasures in photographing in North Sulawesi has been the people who live here…. [T]hey are without doubt the loveliest people I have ever worked with. One hopes for a photographic sequel that will bring the social realm into the magnificent underwater realm of Sulawesi's seas.