Rare Coelacanth Discovered in Sulawesi

As terrestrial vertebrates, our distant ancestors were the lobe-finned fishes (coelacanths and lungfishes) that 375 million years ago first colonized land. Coelacanths were thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago. However, the scientific world was shocked in 1938 when a living coelacanth was discovered off South Africa. After an exhaustive 20 year search, a small population of these fish was found living in 200 - 500 meters of water off the Comores Islands northwest of Madagascar. They were thought to be the only coelacanths to have survived. Biologists were surprised again in September, 1998 when Mark Erdmann, a postdoctoral student working with Roy Caldwell in the Department of Integrative Biology, announced that he had discovered two coelacanths taken off Manado Tua, a small island on the tip of northeastern Sulawesi—nearly 10,000 km from the Comores Islands. Work by Erdmann and collaborators has subsequently shown that the Manado Tua coelacanths probably separated from the east African population 6 million years ago and may be a distinct species. Erdmann took this photo of a coelacanth while it was still alive hours after it was caught by deep water shark fishermen.

Photo submitted by Roy Caldwell.