Guido Zsilavecz, by day a specialist in the telecommunications industry, prefers his moonlighting as an amateur marine zoologist. He took up diving in 1989, and underwater photography shortly thereafter, and quickly developed a need to identify everything he saw below the surface. Although he has travelled extensively for diving, to both tropical and temperate destinations world-wide, he prefers his home waters of Cape Town, South Africa most. His desire to share his knowledge gained over many years led him to co-found the Southern Underwater Research Group (SURG), which assists divers to understand and appreciate Cape Town's diverse underwater life more. Under the SURG banner he has written and published two marine guides, Coastal Fishes of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay, and Nudibranchs of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay.

He has also written numerous articles for a local diving magazine, and has contributed to other marine identification guides, notably the recently published World Atlas of Marine Fishes and Nudibranchs of the World, both by Helmut Debelius and Rudie Kuiter. His knowledge of Cape Town's waters led him to discover and describe a new species of fish, as well as, through SURG's work, a number of nudibranchs, a shrimp and an anemone, most of which still need to be described.

The SURG website can be found at www.surg.co.za

Send Guido email at guido@surg.co.za