About the Authors

Charles Arneson was Executive Director of the Coral Reef Research Foundation. He had his first experiences with tropical marine life while assisting scientists at the University of Puerto Rico's marine laboratory during the summers between college semesters. He obtained a Master's degree from the University of Puerto Rico in 1976 and made his first visit to the tropical Pacific at Enewetak in 1979. He subsequently was employed at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he gained a reputation as an outstanding naturalist. More recently, he operated live aboard dive boats in the western Pacific. He specializes in cnidarian biology of sea anemones and jellyfishes and marine bioluminescence and has authored numerous scientific papers in those fields. His underwater photographs have been published in many books and magazines.

Patrick Colin is President of the Coral Reef Research Foundation and has been in love with the tropical ocean since seeing, at age 12, coral reef fishes in aquariums in his native midwest. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Miami in 1973 while working on the biology of western Atlantic reef fishes. He has since lived in Puerto Rico, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, the Federated States of Micronesia and more recently Palau. His work has taken him to tropical reef areas around the world and encompasses a wide range of topics, from the taxonomy and reproductive biology of reef fishes to the relationships between sediments and organisms. His 20 years of experience in the tropical Pacific has resulted in an intimate acquaintance with and admiration for the creatures of this region. He has written over 60 scientific papers, plus two books, on tropical marine life.