Tony Karacsonyi

Some sea slugs run on solar power, others cast off their body parts, and still others steal firearms from other animals, reusing them. They can even produce sulphuric acid! Marine scientists are discovering that some sea slugs use solar power, breaking all the rules of the animal world as they’re switching from being an animal to a plant, soaking up sunlight to produce a sugary snack. This remarkable group of plant-like animals, the sacoglossan sea slugs, looks more like terrestrial butterflies than slugs, displaying lovely green wings as they slide gracefully across the seafloor. Their graceful appearance masks their darker nature: they’re thieves, stealing chloroplasts and plastids from their seaweed lunches.     These sea slugs use the stolen chloroplasts as a back-up energy supply when food is running short, like using solar energy panels to supplement... (more)

Whale Watching In Australia

“The winch, synchronized with the flensers knife, accelerates, and the bada ~ (the Norwegian word for baleen) with a wrenching tear, parts from the whale and swings wildly up into the air and outboard over the ship’s side, just grazing the bulwarks. During the half-second when it is outboard the winchman lets go his brake, and the lethal mass, which would smash to pulp anyone or anything in it’s way, plunges down toward the sea ~ usually! I’ve seen maybe five or six men killed by the bada alone’, Davison told me.....” —from ‘Of Whales and Men’ There’s romance in the old whaling d... (more)

The Galapagos 'Islands of Fire'

“Another feature of these isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness. It is deemed fit for ... the jackel itself; ... but the encantadas refuse to harbour even the outcasts of the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little but reptile life is here found; tortoises, lizards, ... and that strangest anomaly of outlandish nature, the iguano. No voice, no lo, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss” —Herman Melville, from las Encantadas, 1841 Born of Fire, the Galapagos Islands are tips of submarine volcanoes, a place where evolution can be observed... (more)

Godzilla Diving in Borneo's Sipadan Island, An Ideal Yacht Charter

YV&C International Yacht Vacations & Charters Magazine reports: When Jacques Yves Cousteau first visited Sipadan Island off Borneo, in the seventies, aboard the legendary Calypso, he was so impressed with its marine life, that he and his team of divers stayed on for six months to record its spectacular marine creatures. One of the extraordinary discoveries Cousteau and his divers made was ‘The Turtle’s Tomb’~ a cave where some 20 turtle skeletons can be found. It can still be dived today by special arrangement  with the local dive guides. Jacques Yves Cousteau rat... (more)

Oceanic Cave Crave Yacht Charter

YV&C International Yacht Vacations & Charters Magazine reports: Swimming into a small entrance tunnel at a depth of 26 meters, you ener one of the biggest oceanic limestone caves in the South Pacific Ocean. Fifty meters long, it’s also 20 meters wide and 20 meters high. The cave is teeming with flashlight fishes, reef sharks and a two meter grouper. In the gin clear water, you feel as though your gliding under the roof of a huge cathedral. The caves floor is at 50 metres, below! When Roland Schwara of Water Sports Ha’apai showed this magnificent  cave to US and Japanes... (more)