The Marine Fauna of New Zealand: King Crabs of New Zealand, Australia and the Ross Sea (Crustacea: Decapoda: Lithodidae) by Shane T. Ahyong.

The Marine Fauna of New Zealand: King Crabs of New Zealand, Australia and the Ross Sea (Crustacea: Decapoda: Lithodidae) by Shane T. Ahyong.  Paperback book published by National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd 2010, 194 pages with black and white photographs as well as a few black and white illustrations and maps, and a few colour photographs.

There are some weird pictures in this book.  Look at that cover.  You wouldn’t want to bump into that on a dark, cold, ocean floor… unless of course, you were passionate about King Crabs… or if you were a King Crab out looking for some friends, in which case you probably would want to bump into it.  I don’t have a lot experience with crabs or bumping into crabs on the ocean floor, although I did once partake in a bucket full of poached crabs whilst visiting Scotland.  From memory the crabs I ate didn’t look anything like any of the crabs in this book, but they were very tasty.

 Not a crab that I ate.

In the short term this book is a hard sell and even when I picked it up, this thought ran through my mind.  It was followed rather quickly by the thought that it would be a great book for a longer internet listing and less of an ebay item.  I just get the feeling that a title like this is something that you would want/need for a research or work purpose and less of a collectible/casual interest type of book.  Not that these sort of books are impossible to sell on ebay, this isn’t the case, it’s just from my observations it’s a little more difficult to sell these sort of academic and technical books on ebay… and elsewhere.  Despite my initial theories, I have listed it on ebay and have so far been proved correct.  It’s a great book though and enough to make me avoid the ocean floor as much as I possibly can.