Samantha Weinberg

The story of this fish is just amazing. The coelacanth, closest fish relative to tetrapods (ancestors of all reptiles, amphibians and mammals) was thought to be extinct for over three hundred million years until one day in 1938 when a fisherman in southern Africa offered part of his catch to a local museum curator- including a large and very strange fish. She was unable to properly preserve the specimen, so soon hoped to find another- it didn't happen for thirty years- but then when rewards were offered, fisherman began pulling coelacanths out of the sea rather regularly (considering how long they'd been so hidden). This narrative describes the scramble of scientists and museums to get their hands on coelacanth specimens, and the struggles to procure a live one- even though the fish has an oil-filled organ in lieu of a swim bladder (so it doesn't suffer from decompression when brought up from the great depths where it lives) yet all the coelacanths caught and brought to the surface soon died from the stress and other factors. It was rather stunning to read the description of the first person who built a submersible and was able to dive deep enough to view the coelacanths in their habitat- and find out where they were actually living. There are two known extant populations- one off the Comoros Islands near Madagascar and the other off the coast of Indonesia. (They have different colors- the African coelacanth is dark blue with white markings, and the Indonesian one is brown speckled with gold). When the ancient fish was first discovered the scramble was to procure specimens for study, but then people realized it had a low reproduction rate - giving live birth in small numbers compared to oviparous fishes- and they switched tactics to make fisherman release any coelacanth caught instead of rewarding them for bringing them in. I looked it up and there are still the only the two known populations so it's very rare. Makes you wonder what else is out there, lurking in caves under the ocean, that we don't know about!

The book is pretty engaging, but was a lot about the people involved in the discovery, including political squabbles over who had rights to the first coelacanth specimens- rather than details about the fish itself. I would really like to read some of the firsthand accounts or more about the physiology of the living coelacanth, but this was a really good introduction to the species and its wonders.

from the Dogear Diary… (mer)

Apart from sharks, I had never thought of any fish as “charismatic” but what else would you call a five-foot long fish with steel-blue scales, luminescent green eyes, and limb-like fins that frequently does headstands when submersibles approach?

Coelacanths (seel-a-kanths) swam in Panthalassa and watched the dinosaurs rise and fall. In fact, their fossil record goes back 400 million years. However, they vanished from the fossil record around the same time the dinosaurs did and were presumed extinct. That belief didn’t change until 1938, when Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, the curator of a small museum in South Africa, found a coelacanth in the haul of a fishing boat. She made heroic efforts to preserve it, and it became the type specimen for the species, which was named in her honor (Latimeria chulumnae). But a second specimen was desperately needed, not least because it had not been possible to preserve the internal organs of the first fish. The race to find more coelacanths was on, and this book details the search for more coelacanths and describes many of their unique biological features. There are two extant species, one that lives off the coast of eastern Africa and one that lives in Indonesia, and it is thought there may be a third species living off the coast of Central America.

One of the things about the book that I especially liked was that it included so many first-hand descriptions of peoples’ first impressions of the coelacanths they saw (all in layman’s terms), because they helped give insight into why the fish fired so many peoples’ imaginations, to the extent they were willing to travel to remote, exotic places and build their own submersibles to see it. And to write books dedicated to it. I loved that the author included her own first impression when she viewed a museum specimen for the first time, “It was unlike any fish I had seen before – its body was covered in scaly armor and its fins were attached by fat limb-like protuberances. It had large, yellowy green eyes, and a surprisingly gentle expression on its prehistoric face.”

More descriptions helped suck me in. Marjorie Courtney-Latimer’s first impression was also included, “[it was] the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was five feet long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-gray sheen all over…it was such a beautiful fish – more like a big china ornament.” A description from a scientist in Indonesia effectively captured the magic of encountering a living one in the wild, “It was magnificent, each scale appeared to be flecked in gold. I touched it and it was very soft: I could put my arms around it and squeeze, and it was more like holding a baby with soft, young flesh, than a big, hard fish. The thing that captivated me most was its eyes. They were large and in certain lights were a luminescent, almost alien green, and they kept looking at me.”

Including the descriptions was very effective and made me want to see one for myself. The author seemed to anticipate this reaction, as she helpfully included an appendix with a worldwide list of museums with coelacanth specimens. More technical details on the coelacanth’s anatomy and DNA were consolidated and placed in a second appendix so the curious could learn more without the flow of the narrative being unnecessarily interrupted. As a biologist, this section appealed to me, but you can get a very good introduction to the coelacanth even without reading it. There is also a “Selected Reading” section, which provides citations to all the scientific papers detailing research on the coelacanth (including the original papers in Nature describing the “new” species).

I first found out about this book while I was reading Richard Fortey’s [b:Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|12627411|Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|Richard Fortey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333576387s/12627411.jpg|17681671] and became especially curious when Fortey said coelacanths could be considered living fossils as well, but that as a matter of principle he would not discuss species he could not personally encounter when they were alive. I’m glad he at least mentioned them and gave pointers as to where more information could be found.
… (mer)

Apart from sharks, I had never thought of any fish as “charismatic” but what else would you call a five-foot long fish with steel-blue scales, luminescent green eyes, and limb-like fins that frequently does headstands when submersibles approach?

Coelacanths (seel-a-kanths) swam in Panthalassa and watched the dinosaurs rise and fall. In fact, their fossil record goes back 400 million years. However, they vanished from the fossil record around the same time the dinosaurs did and were presumed extinct. That belief didn’t change until 1938, when Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, the curator of a small museum in South Africa, found a coelacanth in the haul of a fishing boat. She made heroic efforts to preserve it, and it became the type specimen for the species, which was named in her honor (Latimeria chulumnae). But a second specimen was desperately needed, not least because it had not been possible to preserve the internal organs of the first fish. The race to find more coelacanths was on, and this book details the search for more coelacanths and describes many of their unique biological features. There are two extant species, one that lives off the coast of eastern Africa and one that lives in Indonesia, and it is thought there may be a third species living off the coast of Central America.

One of the things about the book that I especially liked was that it included so many first-hand descriptions of peoples’ first impressions of the coelacanths they saw (all in layman’s terms), because they helped give insight into why the fish fired so many peoples’ imaginations, to the extent they were willing to travel to remote, exotic places and build their own submersibles to see it. And to write books dedicated to it. I loved that the author included her own first impression when she viewed a museum specimen for the first time, “It was unlike any fish I had seen before – its body was covered in scaly armor and its fins were attached by fat limb-like protuberances. It had large, yellowy green eyes, and a surprisingly gentle expression on its prehistoric face.”

More descriptions helped suck me in. Marjorie Courtney-Latimer’s first impression was also included, “[it was] the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was five feet long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-gray sheen all over…it was such a beautiful fish – more like a big china ornament.” A description from a scientist in Indonesia effectively captured the magic of encountering a living one in the wild, “It was magnificent, each scale appeared to be flecked in gold. I touched it and it was very soft: I could put my arms around it and squeeze, and it was more like holding a baby with soft, young flesh, than a big, hard fish. The thing that captivated me most was its eyes. They were large and in certain lights were a luminescent, almost alien green, and they kept looking at me.”

Including the descriptions was very effective and made me want to see one for myself. The author seemed to anticipate this reaction, as she helpfully included an appendix with a worldwide list of museums with coelacanth specimens. More technical details on the coelacanth’s anatomy and DNA were consolidated and placed in a second appendix so the curious could learn more without the flow of the narrative being unnecessarily interrupted. As a biologist, this section appealed to me, but you can get a very good introduction to the coelacanth even without reading it. There is also a “Selected Reading” section, which provides citations to all the scientific papers detailing research on the coelacanth (including the original papers in Nature describing the “new” species).

I first found out about this book while I was reading Richard Fortey’s [b:Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|12627411|Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|Richard Fortey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333576387s/12627411.jpg|17681671] and became especially curious when Fortey said coelacanths could be considered living fossils as well, but that as a matter of principle he would not discuss species he could not personally encounter when they were alive. I’m glad he at least mentioned them and gave pointers as to where more information could be found.
… (mer)