The South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, SAIAB, is a world leader in coelacanth research. Last year the institute was pleased to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the discovery of a living coelacanth off the East London coast.
The South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, SAIAB, is a world leader in coelacanth research. Last year the institute was pleased to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the discovery of a living coelacanth off the East London coast.
Scientists were convinced that this peculiar looking fish had been extinct for more than 65 million years so Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer rang alarm bells when she described an unusual fish that had been caught off the coast of East London on 22 December 1938.
Ichthyologist JLB Smith then identified the fish as a coelacanth and spent the next 14 years searching for a second specimen.
Grocott’s Mail recently asked SAIAB Managing Director, Dr Angus Paterson, what kind of research is being done in terms of coelacanths right now:
Angus Paterson: Right now that question’s really worldwide and also in South Africa. Worldwide there’s a lot of behavioural work being done, a lot of anatomical work being done. Within the South African context we were part of the genome project. The genetic structure of the coelacanth was recently unravelled of which South Africans were a key component. A lot of work is going on in terms of the conservation. We’ve still got a long way to go. They’re not in the easiest place to work with being deep water species. So research is not that easy on them, but there’s certainly a lot going on, and they form a component of the Africa Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme (ACEP). That’s a programme that SAIAB runs in conjunction with the Department of Science and Technology although the coelacanth in that programme is pretty much like the panda for WWF. It’s the icon species, we do broad research, but we do certain work specifically with the coelacanth. Just recently a paper came out in Nature, which is the premier publication worldwide in science and the cover was actually the unravelling of the coelacanth genome.
Grocott’s Mail: Were there any surprises found in the genome?
AP: Ja, I mean it certainly gave us a lot more insight into the evolution and history and where things fit in, in terms of the coelacanth. It certainly gave us a lot more insight into the whole evolutionary background to coelacanths and other four-legged animals that came subsequently to the coelacanth.
GM: What’s the closest relative to the coelacanth?
AP: Probably the lungfish
GM: Were you surprised at that?
AP: Well no, it was surprising in terms of the outcome in terms of where they all fitted in. You know it’s a very interesting animal in that it hasn’t really changed in 70 million years and there’s very little similar to it so it certainly was a big advance under the genome. And what was nice about [the project]is that although it was a worldwide effort, the South Africans were key authors.
GM: You said that conservation is a key element of this programme. Does the fact that coelacanths seem to be found a quite deep depths help in their preservation?
AP: Yes and no. One of the key things within the South African population is that we don’t have pressure in terms of fishing. But in the other populations, up the east coast of Africa – the Comores, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and places like that there’s a big pressure on them because artisanal fisherman fish for oil fish at night and lots of coelacanths are caught. It’s a major issue.
GM: At what depth are they caught?
AP: They generally get caught at between 150 to 300 metres. They get caught by these guys who fish at night on their little canoes, fishing for oil fish and deep water fish – a by-catch, they don’t target the coelacanth. But the numbers that they catch is quite significant. I think the bigger question is particularly within the South African context, in that we only know of the one population at Sodwana . At the moment we have definitively identified about 30 different specimens which is not a large population.
