Dangerous Fishes of the Eastern and Southern Arabian Peninsula

This book is devoted to the dangerous fishes found offshore the eastern and southern Arabian Peninsula. It covers information about the main groups of dangerous fish species i.e., biting and predator fish group, venomous stinging fish, electric shock fish, harmful stinging fish, and poisonous fish. In the latter group, the book gives details about fishes that cause several types of toxicities to human. The purpose of this book is to thoroughly introduce life, nature and methods of dangerous fishes in order to form awareness about their danger and to take the proper preventive steps. It will appeal to researchers, scholars, divers, the sea coast visitors and students of marine biology as it is highly informative and carefully presented. This book is the first of its kind for the Arabian region in particular and the Middle East in general.

Laith A. Jawad obtained a degree (M.Sc.) in fish taxonomy from the Zoology Department, University of Bristol, UK in 1980. He continued as fish taxonomist at Basrah University, Iraq, where he worked for more than 20 years before he immigrated to New Zealand in 1997. During this time, he started the biochemical taxonomy of fishes of Iraq and published over 300 scientific papers and book reviews in leading scientific journals. He is the author and co-author of several textbooks in biology published in Arabic. Recently, he contributed five chapters to a book about coastal fishes,” Coastal fishes, habitat, behavior and conservation”, published by Nova Publishers, Canada. He served as fish biodiversity and consultant at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Oman for the period 2008-2012 during which he co-authored two papers describing a new fish species from the Omani waters and reported over 70 fish species as a new record to the Omani waters. He authored a guide to the fishes of the southern coasts of Oman, which will be published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Oman. He also published over 80 papers on fish fauna of Oman, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.