 The west coast of peninsular Thailand is known for its marine fishes, the great diversity of which has captured the attention of ichthyologists and marine biologists for many years. In terms of marine zoogeography, this area has special interest because of the confluence in the Andaman Sea of fishes from the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. However, difficulties can be encountered in identifying fishes in this area, as there presently is no adequate guidebook for fishes of the Andaman Sea. Although we have been conducting fish faunal surveys in the region over the past three years, our project to produce a guidebook for fishes of the Andaman Sea is not yet complete. The present book is published in the hope that it will assist local ichthyologists, fisheries scientists, students and government administrators who are carrying out or supervising research on fishes of the seagrass beds, mangroves and estuaries of this area. We believe that this book will be useful for identifying fishes found in these habitats, not only for Libong Island but also for other coastal regions of western peninsular Thailand. This book is published in the style and with similar aims as our earlier publications, Field Guide to Lombok Island (Matsuura et al., 2000) and Fishes of Bitung (Kimura and Matsuura, 2003).
This project was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), under the JSPS Core University Program, and the Phuket Marine Biological Center (PMBC). The preparation of this book was partially supported by grants from the JSPS-Multilateral Cooperative Research Program “Coastal Oceanography” and the Ministry of Environment, Government of Japan (MOE)-Global Environment Research Fund.
(Keiichi Matsuura)
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