Mysteries of the Deep

By Dan Lewis | Wed, 16 Jan 2008

Scientists assumed the coelacanth had been extinct for 70 million years, until a South African fisherman caught one.

Coelacanths are a very mysterious species of fish. Thought to be extinct for about 70 million years, the elusive creature has captured imaginations and has been featured on a non-circulating, legal-tender issue (NCLT) and a Coelacanth circulating coin.

The coelacanths' supposed extinction ended on December 23, 1938 when a trawler caught one in the Indian Ocean off the Chalumna River in South Africa. The boat?s captain, Hendrik Goosen, called his friend East London Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer to look over his catch for interesting specimens. She noticed an unusual fish, calling it ?the most beautiful fish I had ever seen, five feet long, and a pale, mauve blue with iridescent silver markings.?

Unable to identify the specimen, Courtenay-Latimer reluctantly sent it to a taxidermist.When her friend professor James Leonard Brierley Smith returned from Christmas vacation, he recognized the coelacanth and dubbed it Latimeria chalumnae. Because the gills and skeleton were removed when the coelacanth was stuffed, doubt remained as to whether it was truly the same species. Smith launched a worldwide search for more coelacanths, offering a reward of 100 British pounds.

A specimen was found in 1952 in the Comoros, but the fish was no stranger to the locals. In the port of Mutsamudu on the island of Anjouap, fishermen were puzzled to be richly rewarded for a ?gombessa? or "mame", their names for the nearly inedible fish they occasionally caught. Now aware of the endangered species? significance, the Comorians established a program to return accidentally caught coelacanths to deep water. In 1984 the Comoros issued a 5-franc circulating coin featuring species on its reverse. In 2001 the Bank of Zambia issued an NCLT depicting a coelacanth on the reverse.

The three others coins in the "Patrons of the Ocean" series depict a seahorse and tropical fish in a coral garden, a sea turtle and two dolphins.

Since 1952, coelacanths have been found in Comoros, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar and South Africa.