Coelacanth Extinction?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 9th, 2006
Boing Boing has posted an intriguing entry on “Coelacanths in Danger” today.
Who would ever have thought that the coelacanth, “rediscovered” in 1938 & 1952 (off Africa) and then, shockingly, “rediscovered” in 1998 (off Sumatra), would be the topic so quickly of them going extinct.
As Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz observes:
The coelacanth is a fish that was thought to have been extinct for the last 65 million years until it showed up in 1938 near South Africa. Apparently though, it’s really on the verge of extinction this time. Last year, 25 of them were accidentally caught in shallow-water nets. This is unusual because the fish are known to live at depths of 100 to 300 meters.
Meanwhile, what ever happened to the probable new finds of different coelacanth species in other oceans of the world?
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Don’t know if they are going extinct or not, since (to my knowledge)there has not been a census of them taken. It does seem likely, though, since that many have been caught and so few are seen. My concern is what could possibly causing them to move up from the depths? This could help to prevent extinction if it were known.
According to the religion of evolution things go extinct because something better is taking its place, so evolutionists should be pleased to hear the coelacanth is finally “moving on” to make room for a more fit creature.
Cryptomundo reader and correspondent, Dr. Victor Springer, former Curator of Fishes, and currently Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Smithsonian, sends along the following reply to 2400bc’s above remarks, with permission to post it here:
“Unless this comment above was tongue-in-cheek, the notion that stated species go extinct because or when something better is replacing them is off base. Species can go extinct because of natural phenomena (e.g., a lake with endemic species drying up because the springs that were feeding it dried up) or changes caused by human-induced phenomena, such as pollution or overfishing.”
You have to think this fish went off the maps for 65 million years we only have seen a few of them in the last 100 years maby this is like a great awaking for them like they went into a massive hybernation during one of the mass extinctions and are now all just waking up and some that were sick,old. or even just needing to breed (like catfish come to the shallow banks) but they are natrualy deep ocean fish so maby they just went back to the deep