First Zanzibar Coelacanth Caught
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 16th, 2007
Small coelacanth from Tanzania caught in February 2007; it is not the one discussed below. Photo courtesy dinofish.
The known range of the coelacanth is expanded with this new discovery, and hope remains high that the “living fossil” fish may exist in some surprising locations around the world.
Zanzibar, Tanzania – Fishermen have caught a rare and endangered fish, the coelacanth, off the coast of the Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar, a researcher said on Monday [July 16, 2007].
The find makes Zanzibar the third place in Tanzania where fishermen have caught the coelacanth, a heavy-bodied, many-finned fish with a three-lobed tail that was thought extinct until it was caught in 1938 off the coast of South Africa. Since then two types of coelacanth have been caught in five other countries: Comoros, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique, according to African Coelacanth Ecosystem Program.
“Fishermen informed us that they caught a strange fish in their nets. We rushed to Nungwi (the northern reaches of Zanzibar) to find it’s a coelacanth, a rare fish thought to have become extinct when it disappeared from fossil records 80 million years ago,” said Nariman Jiddawi of the Institute of Marine Sciences, which is part of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania’s commercial capital.
Trade in the coelacanth is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
“Zanzibar will join a list of sites of having the rare fish caught in its own waters,” said Jiddawi, adding the catch weighed 59.5 pounds and measured 4.4 feet.
Four fishermen caught the fish on Saturday [July 14, 2007], Jiddawi said.
Mussa Aboud Jume, director of fisheries in Zanzibar, said that the coelacanth will be preserved and put on display at the Zanzibar Museum.
A statement of the Institute of Marine Sciences said that 35 coelacanths have been caught since September 2003 in Mtwara, a southern region of Tanzania, and mostly along the coast of Tanga in Tanzania’s north.
Coelacanths are the only living animals to have a fully functional intercranial joint, a division separating the ear and brain from the nasal organs and eye, according to an Institute of Marine Sciences statement.by Ali Sultan, AP writer, “Tanzania fishermen catch endangered fish,”, July 16, 2007, Associated Press.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Great story. Just more proof that we don’t know what is out there in the ocean depths.
Now that some general characteristics of the depth and habitat in which they thrive are becoming known, I won’t be surprised if they’re found in other regions within the Indian Ocean and maybe beyond. As the more easily caught fish near the surfaceare depleted, harvesting is taking place at greater depth and local markets are turning up with some surprising “catch of the day”.
This species of fish disappears from the fossil record 80 million years ago and it presumed extinct.
Just how many other creatures still exist that disappeared from the fossil record.. or have never been found in the fossil record?
I think it’s a good thing that the Coelacanths are showing up in more and more places.
Perhaps we may be not so sure of their numbers exactly?
Why aren’t these fish being released back into the Ocean? Is it because they are already dead by the time they are pulled from nets? Or is it that these people don’t know what they have?
WOW, this is so good to see.
You know, as a kid we all wanted to see dinosaurs and dragons et al so badly. And here we go, 80 million year old fish.
Absolutely incredible photo. Thanks for sending this out.
If you find yourself in San Francisco some day with a little time to on your hands, the California Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park had (or had, last time I was there) the original specimen collected in the the 1935 expedition which they, in part, sponsored.
Amazing huh?, If these can still be living then…Mokele Mbembe, Nessie, Champ, Caddy, Mamlambo, river dinos(4 corners area raptor-like dinos), pteradactyls, giant sloths, prong horn anteleope….er uh wait, we already have discovered them…Did you guys know prong horn are a “living fossil”? Yep, they were around in the wooly mammoth days…Crocodiles were around with dinos as were sharks or actually sharks are SUPPOSED to be older. None of this Coelecanth stuff suprises me.
Since pronghorns are mentioned as a kind of living fossil, it should be pointed out that they evolved to evade a now missing cat, the cheetah. And these are only a couple of examples of species who are conspicuously absent and in fact an idea to re-introduce cheetahs and other once native critters to mend the ecosystem’s natural diversity has been gathering some interest and support among conservation biologists and significant groups.
Huh? Where’s the logic here? Maybe I missed something, but finding a fish that has been known to exist since 1938 is hardly “proof that we don’t know what is out there in the ocean depths.”
So I suppose finding a colony of black panthers in New Hampshire wouldn’t lead you to suspect that we don’t know everything that’s in our forests either? After all, we know black panthers exist, too.
Come on, finding a Coelacanth anywhere where it isn’t known to be is a relatively big deal. It obviously proves that we didn’t know everything lurking in the depths of the waters off Zanzibar, at the very least.
Now, having said that, it’s not too surprising, given that other African sites are known. Finding one of these fish in, say, the Gulf Of Mexico, would obviously be a little more surprising, and by extension, much more of a big deal. But, you never know what someone might pull up tomorrow…