Grant's Guide to Fishes is the culmination of a journey which can trace its origins in 1963. Asked by his mentors and seniors in the Department of Harbours & Marine to produce a guide to commercial fishes in Queensland, Ern Grant wrote a small black-and-white production called Know Your Fishes.

From this humble beginning came the first Guide to Fishes, produced also by the Queensland Government, and starting in 1965 with its first edition. This book had no photographs, but relied on the then-common method of identification through painstaking drawings by delineators (mainly 2 very skilled draftsmen/artists). However, Ern's contacts said: "Surely even a poor photograph is better to identify a fish than a great drawing?" And so began a lifetime of work in collecting a massive range of fish - in photographs. Many of these were hand-captured by net, line or chasing down over sand, mud or coral reefs and collecting by hand-scoop.

The second edition in 1972 received the benefit of the first set of these photographs, and ended in 1982 with the fifth edition of Guide to Fishes.

Unable to gain permission to update the Government Guide to Fishes once in retirement, Grant went on to produce a brand new book, Fishes of Australia privately in 1987, and Corals of the Great Barrier Reef in 1991. This new private production of the Guide, as Grant's Guide to Fishes, first appeared in 1993 with the sixth edition, and has appeared to achieve the same measure of public acceptance as the earlier editions.

AVAILABLE AFTER
22nd AUGUST 2008

The most recent (10th) edition was a commemorative edition written in 2004 - almost forty years after the appearance of the first edition! The editions have run as follows:

First published 1965 (8,000 copies)
Second edition 1972 (10,000 copies)
Third edition 1975 (14,000 copies)
Fourth edition 1978 (20,000 copies)
Fifth edition 1982 (28,000 copies)
Reprinted 1986 (10,000 copies)
Sixth edition 1993 (6,000 copies)
Seventh edition 1997 (3,000 copies)
Eighth edition 1999 (3,000 copies)
Ninth edition 2002 (3,000 copies)
Tenth edition 2004 (3,000 copies)
Eleventh edition 2008 (5,000 copies)
DUE OUT AROUND AUGUST 2008

Each edition is edited to take advantage of new technology, new photographs, and updated information on fish identification, groupings and maximum sizes. For example, Ern has been working on the 11th edition for the past 2 years. This is a radical change to previous editions, because for the first time, the old lithographic film from which the Guide has relied since its inception (with some renewals) cannot be re-used.

This means that Ern's son Morgan worked on the fastidious job to firstly reset all the new edition in digital form. The files were sent to Printpoint which produced the book on a digital 4-colour sheet-fed digital press. Printpoint also reset the pages into a new modern page layout and redesigned the cover and this website.

Without getting hung up on the digital technology, this means that all the pages can be changed without the previous prohibitive correction/resetting costs. All like fish can then be moved together for the first time since the first edition in 1965!

Another advantage is that the printers we have chosen use Waterless printing - this allows much higher quality print with sharper, clearer colour. It is also much kinder to the environment!