Coleacanths

Coelacanths were thought to have vanished approximately 80 million years ago, but until 1938, all that was known about them was an order of unusual lobe-finned fish that first emerged in the fossil record over 400 million years ago.Thus, it makes sense that the 1938 discovery of a living coelacanth off the coast of South Africa caused a lot of excitement. Latimeria chalumnae, the "true" home of the living coelacanth, was found in the Comoran archipelago in the western Indian Ocean after a fourteen-year hunt for a second specimen of this amazing fish. About 200 specimens have been captured in the Comoros since then.A few other individuals have also been discovered in the vicinity of Mozambique and Madagascar; however, genetic studies indicate that these may just be "strays" from the main Comoros population.When UC Berkeley researchers revealed in 1998 that they had found a coelacanth in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, which is around 10,000 kilometers away from the Comoros, the scientific community was once again taken aback. While on his honeymoon with his wife Arnaz in September 1997, Dr. Mark Erdmann observed a coelacanth for the first time in Indonesia. When Arnaz arrived at the fish market, he saw a big, odd-looking fish being carried by in a cart. Dr. Erdmann joyfully took a picture of the fish, quickly identifying it as a coelacanth, and spoke with the fisherman for a short while.They came to the conclusion that coelacanths had probably already been discovered in Indonesia, as they couldn't have possibly made such a significant discovery. Sadly, they decided not to buy and store the coelacanth. After arriving in Berkeley a week later, they conducted additional research and discovered that this was, in fact, a significant and surprising finding.In November 1997. Dr. Erdmann went back to Sulawesi to look for another coelacanth. He spoke with more than 200 fishermen in the coastal towns surrounding North Sulawesi over the course of five months, but very few of them appeared to be familiar with the species.When he finally spoke with two fishermen, they told him they occasionally captured coelacanth, which they referred to as "Raja Laut, which means "King of the Sea." On July 30, 1998, after several months of meticulous observation of their catch, Dr. Erdmann was rewarded with a second Sulawesi coelacanth. Om Lameh Sonatham caught the second Sulawesi coelacanth in a deep-set shark gill net off Manado Tua island in Bunaken Marine Park (see map of location under "Where do they live?"). When the coelacanth was given to Dr. Erdmann, it was hardly alive. They took pictures of the animal in shallow water after momentarily reviving it by pulling it behind their boat (see photo on the "home" page). The damaged fish was frozen after it passed away and then given to the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The Sulawesi coelacanth was classified as a new species by a French and Indonesian research team (Pouyand, L., et al. 1999, "A new species of coelacanth)."Rendus Comptes v322(4):261-267. More thorough molecular and morphological investigations of the Sulawesi coelacanth were reported in a work that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 1999 (Holder, M.T., M.V. Erdmann, T.P. Wilcox, R.L. Caldwell, and D.M. Hillis, 1999). Coelacanths: Two Living Species? (Proc. Nat. Acad. Science 96:12616–12620). According to research done by scientists from the Universities of Texas at Austin and Berkeley, as well as maybe as far back as 16 million years ago, Holder et al. found that the Comoran and Sulawesi populations most likely split 5.5 million years ago.Compared to Pouyand et al.'s estimate of 1.2 to 1.4 million years ago, this is far earlier. The discrepancies result from the sequencing mistakes that Pouyand et al. made in their computation of the age of divergence. The researchers from Berkeley and Texas have come to the conclusion that the two populations most likely represent distinct species based on the molecular evidence. Nevertheless, Holder et al. were unable to uncover the physical features that Pouyand et al. claimed separated the Comoran population from the Sulawesi fish. This is because Holder et al. employed a larger sample size of fish from the Comoran, which resulted in a more accurate estimation of the degree of variance.In 1998, the journal Nature published a cover story by Erdmann et al. announcing the discovery and preservation of a live coelacanth approximately 10,000 kilometers away from the Comoros (Erdmann, M.V., Caldwell, R.L., and Moosa, M.K. 1998. "Indonesian 'King of the Sea' Discovered" Nature v.395:335). Worldwide media outlets such as CNN, ABC News, and National Geographic reported on the discovery in their newspapers, radio programs, and television shows. In January 1999, p. 49, Discover magazine recognized the discovery as one of the top science stories of 1998.In 1998, the journal Nature published a cover story by Erdmann et al. announcing the discovery and preservation of a live coelacanth approximately 10,000 kilometers away from the Comoros (Erdmann, M.V., Caldwell, R.L., and Moosa, M.K. 1998. "Indonesian 'King of the Sea' Discovered" Nature v.395:335).
Worldwide media outlets such as CNN, ABC News, and National Geographic reported on the discovery in their newspapers, radio programs, and television shows. In January 1999, p. 49, Discover magazine recognized the discovery as one of the top science stories of 1998.Dr. Erdmann published the first official descriptions of the two Sulawesi coelacanths that are known to exist, together with the story of their discovery, in Environmental Biology of Fishes in 1999. M.V. Erdmann (1999). An account of the first coelacanth found alive in Indonesian waters that scientists are aware of. Erdmann, M.V., R.L. Caldwell, S.L. Jewett, and A. Tjakrawidjaja (1999), Env. Biol. Fishes, 54: 440–444.
North Sulawesi is home to the second coelacanth known to exist today. Fish Environment Biology, 54, 445–451. Dr. Erdmann outlines the circumstances leading up to the initial Indonesian coelacanth's discovery and photography in the Manado fish market in the first paper. The fish that was caught off the coast of Manado Tua on July 30, 1998, its preservation, and its donation to the Indonesian government are all covered in the second paper.
Acknowledgments:
The National Geographic Society (#6349-98) and the National Science Foundation (#INT-9704616) provided funding for Dr. Erdmann's research. Additionally, significant equipment contributions from Splash-Cam® Deep Blue underwater video cameras from Ocean Systems and TidBit® temperature loggers from Onset Computer Corporation have funded ongoing research. Dr. M.K. Moosa and the Indonesian Institute of Science sponsored and supported research projects in Indonesia.