Book of the Month May 2005

'A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth' by Samantha Weinberg

This months book is all about the "living fossil" fish, the coelacanth. In this book, Samantha Weinberg gives the background story on the most improbable and one of the most important finds of the 20th century.

Latimeria chalumnae

Where would any good biographical depiction start better than at the beginning? In this chapter, we are introduced to Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum in East London, South Africa. Just before Christmas, 1938, a strange specimen of a fish was found by Courtenay-Latimer in the midst of a haul of sharks, seaweed, and various other items from the ocean. These were caught in nets that were dragged behind a boat at a depth of about 40 fathoms (240 feet), around the mouth of the Chalumna river. Courtenay-Latimer wasn't an ichthyologist, but she had some background enough to know that this was no ordinary fish. Realizing the possible importance of the fish, she bundled it immediately, did her best to preserve it, and sent a letter off to J. L. B. Smith, an amateur ichthyologist and curator of a number of museums off the southern coast of South Africa. After this brief introduction to some of the key players in this tale, we are given a more detailed look into who Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was.

Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi

"There is always something new out of Africa (Pliny)," read one of the newspaper headlines when reports of the living fossil reached the rest of the world. This chapter provides a bit of the history behind the various fossil coelacanths known to science at the time of the discovery of the living specimen. It also details some of the media hype surrounding both J. L. B. Smith and the coelacanth.

Inter Pisces

Here, we learn about the life of J. L. B. Smith, from child- to adulthood. We learn about how he learned what he did about fish, and get a chance to understand why, once having seen the remains of a living fossil, he was obsessed with finding and preserving another specimen. He had offered a reward of £100 to any fisherman who could bring him a specimen.

Malania Anjouanae

The hunt was on for a live specimen of coelacanth. Fliers with the incredible reward (£100's for an ugly and pretty useless fish? Someone must be joking...) appeared all over the south Indian Ocean, from South Africa, to the islands of the Comoros, and up the eastern African coast. Enter Eric Hunt, a charismatic and adventurous sea trader based out of Zanzibar, and eager to help find the now-infamous coelacanth. He met up with Smith and his wife Margaret while in Zanzibar, and Hunt had promised to find the next coelacanth for Smith, and just before Christmas 1952, he did. Brought to him by a fisherman, who had crossed the island to present it to Hunt, the race was now on to get word to Smith. Smith did get the telegraph, and now had to find a way to get to the remote Comoros island town of Dzaoudzi during the Christmas holiday...

Star Fish

In the 14 years between the capture of coelacanths (each of a different species, which meant that not only had there been one living fossil but two), the world became a different place, especially politically. Smith was again in the world spotlight, and this time the tale of the adventure to get to the coelacanth seemed something out of a movie. That the new species of coelacanth Malania anjouanae had been caught in French territory, but released to the South African government by the governor of the Comoros caused quite a stir, and the French were now determined to get their own coelacanth, excluding anyone else from fishing the waters around the islands. They had even appointed their own scientist on the islands to make sure they got the first stab at a new fish find...

Notre Coelacanthe

When the French closed off the Comoros to the rest of the scientific world for the study of the coelacanth, they made it so that they ended up being the next to find a new specimen, which turned up less than a year later. They were also able to get hold of coelacanths number 4 and 5, as well, and were soon well-situated to study the fish. They were able to prepare the fish so that the viscera and other innerworkings were preserved as well, something that Smith had been unable to accomplish. As a result, a lengthy and detailed report, which took nearly two decades to complete, gave information about the fish that seemed to have raised as many questions as it had answered...

Le Poisson Vivant

Since the French were now up to their proverbial chins in coelacanths that had been captured, they were able to do a lot of study on what makes them tick. The next natural step was to see what they looked like in the wild. How did their fins move, what were their interactions with each other? Did they bear live young, or lay eggs? This chapter ends with a short tribute to the life (and death) of J. L. B. Smith.

In Comorian

This chapter deals with the history of the Comoros after the French had left it as a colony, and it became an independent nation, and the status of the coelacanth in the fluctuating quagmire left in the wake. After the French left, the international restriction on fishing for the coelacanth was lifted, and fishermen could earn more money catching a single gombessa (the native word for the coelacanth) than they could make in almost five years worth of fishing otherwise. This free reign on catching the coelacanth led to an effort to protect it...

Der Quastenflosser

Since it was clear to the scientific community that to catch more coelacanths would mean to put the population as a whole in jeopardy, explorers were now limited to finding live specimens and ensuring they stayed that way. One way to do that is to catch it on film, video if possible, please. Hans Fricke, a German who became a coelacanth enthusiast early on in life, raised money to build and use a submersible to see the coelacanth in its natural environment. He, and his team, spent years off the coasts of the Comoros islands trying to locate the elusive fish, and when they caught it on film, Fricke had the chance to meet the wife of J. L. B. Smith, Margaret Smith, who in her own right became a coelacanth celebrity...

Jago

The Jago was the antecessor of the Geo, Hans Fricke's first craft. It was built under the experiment Fricke and team had gained while searching for the coelacanth, so the Jago was a better tool to use for hunting the elusive fish. With this new submersible, Fricke and crew were able to see many more coelacanths, and determined a possible population count for them. This population count suggested that the coelacanth needed to be protected, and soon. But, were the coelacanths around the Comoros the only ones? Recall that the first coelacanth ever found was caught by South Africa. Now, there are tantalizing clues that suggest that there are coelcanths in other parts of the world, including the Gulf of Mexico...

Rajah Laut

While on their honeymoon, Mark and Arnaz Erdmann chanced upon an old man carting around a strange-looking fish, which Mark had immediately identified as a coelacanth. But, they were on the other side of the Indian Ocean, near Indonesia, nearly half a world away from where the Comoros Islands coelacanths lived. How could this be, unless there were coelacanths here as well? Thus began the hunt for "rajah laut," the king of the sea...

Terra Incognita

The discovery of coelacanths near Indonesia caused another international fervor, but not as dramatically as there had been when Smith introduced the world to the coelacanth. While there were some disputes, both scientific and political, how the coelacanth was handled in Indonedia was vastly different than it was handled in the Comoros. Almost immediately Erdmann had made an appeal to protect the fish, and received it. Genetic testing had shown that the coelacanths on either side of the Indian Ocean differed enough genetically to be different species. The discovery of the rajah laut had reinvigorated the idea that there could, perhaps, be other coelacanth species elsewhere around the world...

Summary

This is an excellent book. Weinberg captures with vivid detail the frenzy created by spectacular scientific finds. She has a knack for bringing in just enough of the history to make her tale meaningful. Who would have thought that such an ugly fish (ugly to some, I guess...) could be so important to so many people? I highly recommend this book. It's a quick and easy read, without having much of the scientific jargon that other books of the genre can have. This makes it easier to appeal to the masses, and as well it should.