A few things on our wishlist have happened lately, and the news that Coral Finder Author Russell Kelley is working on a guide to Soft Corals is music to our ears. Named the Octocoral Finder, the new book will be the culmination of a long cherished dream of Russell Kelley to publish an ID tool for Octocorals (soft corals, whips, fans, and pens) that is practical and easy to use, and when we went on his excellent Coral ID workshop, it was the most requested item in user feedback too.
We asked Russell why he hadn’t produced one before:
“I had not attempted to do one before now for several reasons:”
(1) the Coral Finder had to come first
(2) I needed to capture dedicated photographic sequences of sufficient quality and scope to do justice to the subject – (there are more than 80 shallower octocoral genera)
(3) traditional Octocoral taxonomy is somewhat user-hostile being based on microscopic studies of tiny skeletal elements known as sclerites, and,
(4) like the hard corals, it was widely appreciated that the new molecular taxonomy techniques would bring major changes to the traditional view of things – lots of names were likely to change.
“Finally in 2022 a major review of the Octocorals was published and so I felt I could begin the process of learning the taxonomy myself, capturing the necessary images before crafting a user-friendly experience in the way that the Coral Finder makes hard coral identification approachable.”
“Currently the Octocoral Finder is in the design phase and drawing on 13000, provisionally identified, purpose shot field images which will expand to about 20000 by the time it is published in late 2024. I’m hoping about 60 octocoral genera will be included in the first edition. Good, purposeful photography makes ID possible for many genera but there will still be some here-be-dragons moments for a few genera that the Octocoral Finder will tell you need a specimen for microscope ID confirmation.”
“The point is that this will be the first book to offer the interested person a plain language, visually driven ID tool that covers the shallow water (<30m) Indo-Pacific genera. Most importantly it will clearly delineate which genera you can ID with attention to detail (let’s call them known knowns), and those you can’t (known unknowns). To get to the stage where people can know what they know (and have reasons) will be a significant achievement that will save a lot of people time chasing their tales when the state of the scientific knowledge isn’t there.”
“The Octocoral Finder will be great for both field biologists and aquarists, and like the Coral Finder will reference the scientific literature responsible for the name changes for further learning. Most importantly it will be the only up-to-date practical tool that promotes an appreciation of the amazing diversity of tropical octocorals.”
More info
For more information on the Coral Finder, workshops, and (in the future,) the Octocoral Finder, go to www.byoguides.com
McFadden, C. S., van Ofwegen, L. P., & Quattrini, A. M. (2022). Revisionary systematics of Octocorallia (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) guided by phylogenomics. Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists, 1(3). https://doi.org/10.18061/bssb.v1i3.8735
