Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 111, March 2014, pp. 1-9. | Page 6

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The discovery was hailed as the scientific sensation of the century and a huge
search for another specimen was mounted. Leaflets and posters carrying a
picture of Latimeria and offering a huge reward were distributed among the
countless fishing villages that dot the coasts of southern and eastern Africa. But
without result. Then, fourteen years later, after it had seemed that this strange
fish had appeared only to disappear totally, another was caught, not off South
Africa but a thousand miles away in Anjouan, one of the tiny Comoro Islands
that lie in the Indian Ocean midway between Madagascar and the coast of
Tanzania. The first one, it seems, was a stray, for the fishermen of the Comoros
said that the coelacanth was no stranger to them. They caught one or two each
season in depths of about two or three hundred metres. They did not often fish
for them deliberately, for a coelacanth fights hard when it is hooked and a man
might have to struggle with one of them for many hours before it could be
hauled on board his canoe. And after all that trouble, its flesh is oily and not
particularly good to eat. Indeed, almost the most valuable part of the coelacanth
anatomy, to the Comorians, is its rough heavy scales. They are very useful for
rubbing down inner tubes when mending a puncture (Attenborough 1979,
Khalaf 1987).
Since that time, several dozen more coelacanths have been caught and
paradoxically, science now knows more about Latimeria than many an abundant
fish. A pregnant female has been caught with young inside her attached to their
yolk sacs, just like the Illinois fossil, showing that the species does not lay its eggs
but gives birth to live young. But because it is so powerful a fish, such a doughty
fighter and has to be dragged up from such depths, Latimeria very seldom
reaches the shore alive (Attenborough 1979, Khalaf 1987).
One of the fishermen brought a Coelacanth in, lashed to the side of his canoe. It,
too, was nearly dead, but he was persuaded to release it in a bay long enough for
it to be filmed with an underwater camera as it swam slowly above the bottom.
And indeed, it did hold its stout pectoral fins away from the sides of its body,
and it was not hard to imagine that had it been vigorous, it could have used
them to help it move over the rocky sea floor of its true environment. What is
more, it was also clear that, mechanically, such fins would be of real assistance
out of water as in it, had the fish, like its ancient forebears, been living in shallow
water and become stranded (Attenborough 1979, Khalaf 1987).

References and Internet Websites
Attenborough, David (1979). Life on Earth. Collins, London, Glasgow, Sydney,
Auckland, Toronto, Johannesburg, and the British Broadcasting Corporation,
London. 319 pp.
Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 111 – March 2014