Why I Chose the Coelacanth

My love affair with a prehistoric fish


On December 23, 1938, the captain of a sea trawler returned to the harbor at East London after a trawl around the mouth of the Chalumna River. As usual, he telephoned his friend, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator at East London's small museum, to see if she wanted to look over the contents of the catch for anything interesting. At the harbor, Latimer noticed a blue fin and took a closer look.

Sixty years later she could still recall it as if it were yesterday. She found what she later described as "the most beautiful fish I had ever seen, five feet long, and a pale mauve blue with iridescent silver markings."

Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer had discovered a Coelacanth.

In 1938 there weren’t any available storage and preservation facilities like today, and Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was desperate to preserve the specimen she was sure must be something from another time. Fortunately, a local taxidermist helped her out with storage, although he had no idea where to start the process for actually stuffing it. The thing had no ribs and a flexible tube where the spine should have been. and she immediately contacted Dr James Smith, a chemistry lecturer who acted as honorary curator of fish for smaller museums. But Smith was on holiday, and didn't see her letter until 11 days later.

Dr. Smith wrote later: "I didn't know any fish of our own, or indeed of any seas, like that. It looked more like a lizard. Then a bomb seemed to burst in my brain." Smith was assailed by fears that he was about to make a fool of himself. "It was preposterous that coelacanths had been alive for 70 million years, unknown to modern man," he wrote.

Smith didn't make it to East London until a month later. On a rainy day, he arrived at the museum, even taking along his pregnant wife. "Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer," Smith said. "There was not a shadow of doubt. It was a true coelacanth."

An armed guard took the fish back to Smith's museum. Over the next few months, it would stun the world.

The 1938 coelacanth is still on display in the East London Museum. I have seen it, up close and personal. It’s nothing short of breathtaking. You look at a Coelacanth and you are looking at TIME PAST, like an H.G. Wells story. It’s a fish with legs. It’s a mammal with gills. What the hell is it?

Coelacanths, like Wolves, are special to me. They represent a will to live, even more than that, they seem to say; “I’m still here, you haven’t killed me yet”. They are the ancient observers of history.

I first heard about them when I was taking Natural Science for a snap course with an easy three credits at the University of South Carolina. The professor only gave it a few passing remarks enroute to a greater age in Paleology, but something about this creature had caught my attention. I spent the rest of the course studying the Coelacanth, and although I eventually dropped Natural History altogether, I kept the fish.

Do you know how old these things are? At last approximation it was 410 million years ago.

410 MILLION. Probably earlier, that’s just what we can prove for certain.

They predate MAN on this planet.

They predate DINOSAURS on this planet.

They predate CONTINENTS on this planet.

That’s right kiddies, Earth was still Pangaea (one supercontinent) when the Coelacanth was living it up.

They are at least 200 million years older than the Triassic period, before the Permian-Triassic extinction, also called the “Great Dying” of ancestral species that predate what we now know as Dinosaurs.

Trilobites, that great archeological mile-marker for Paleologists and Paleobotanists, weren’t around yet.

We hadn’t even fallen out of the damn trees yet, and while everything else on Earth was either dying or evolving into something new, these bastards were checking out the local tidal pools singing “Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stayin’ Alive! Stayin’ Alive!”.

Although Coelacanths are classified as a fish, from what scientists can tell (it’s not easy you know…These guys DID manage to elude us since the dawn of time!) female coelacanths give birth to live young in groups of between 5 and 25 fry at a time; the pups are capable of surviving on their own immediately after birth. Their reproductive behaviors are not well known, but it is believed that they are not sexually mature until after 20 years of age.

Freaking Killer Whales are sexually mature faster than that. Oh, and gestation time for a baby Coelacanth is 13 months. And Coelacanths grow BIG, they can get to be over 6 feet long, weighing almost 200 lbs, and they live for anywhere between 80 to 100 years.

But after all this, Coelacanths aren’t out of the woods yet. Museums have been desperate to acquire one, and when it seemed the Comoros was the only place to find them the Coelacanth quest caused huge problems for local islanders. Catching one could make them rich beyond their wildest imaginings, so all the fishermen set out after Coelacanths, and stopped providing fish for the local villages.

Rich Chinese have muddied the water even further, offering vast amounts for a specimen in the belief that eating one will give longevity. Which is about their speed, considering what they do to acquire Tiger bones and Rhino horns. But there’s just one little catch:

The flesh of a Coelacanth is inedible.

It has been described as like “eating raw sewage” by resident Comorians, and activates the gag reflex no matter how well you cook it. There is a story that it is digestible after it has been dried and salted, but even that tale comes with a caveat emptor: You may get sick anyway, as only a few stern souls can actually swallow the jerky version.

These creatures are another link in the great chain, and are to be respected.

I hope this little Archeology lesson hasn’t bored you to tears. People ask me about some online accounts I have called “Coelacanth” all the time, and I thought I would put down exactly what they mean to me. Because in this age of war and global conflict, at this tiny space we have been allotted for existence, in this time when reducing the human population into negative numbers has never been easier or closer at hand, I’d like to believe there’s still a way out for us that doesn’t end in obliteration.

I mean, if a damn FISH can pull it off, is there hope for man after all…?