Cryptomundo » First Zanzibar Coelacanth Caught

First Zanzibar Coelacanth Caught

Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 16th, 2007

Tanzania

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.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Breaking News, CryptoZoo News, Cryptotourism, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Extinct, Fossil Finds, Living Dinosaurs, Museums, New Species. You can follow responses via our RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is not allowed.

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11 Responses to “First Zanzibar Coelacanth Caught”

cmgrace responds: July 16th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Great story. Just more proof that we don’t know what is out there in the ocean depths.
dogu4 responds: July 16th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
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”.
ShefZ28 responds: July 17th, 2007 at 1:14 am
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?
Atticus responds: July 17th, 2007 at 3:01 am
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?
DARHOP responds: July 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
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?
sluggo responds: July 17th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
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.
dogu4 responds: July 18th, 2007 at 7:41 am
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.
sasquatch responds: July 18th, 2007 at 8:54 am
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.
dogu4 responds: July 18th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
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.
Benjamin Radford responds: July 18th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
“Great story. Just more proof that we don’t know what is out there in the ocean depths.”

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.”
Mnynames responds: July 19th, 2007 at 12:31 am
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…

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