The Coelacanth in the Fish Market
A honeymooning biologist spotted a coelacanth in an Indonesian fish market, 10,000 km from the only population known to science.
What was reported
The coelacanth, a fish known from fossils and thought to have died out with the dinosaurs, was found alive off South Africa in 1938, and later around the Comoros Islands.
In September 1997, the American marine biologist Mark Erdmann, on his honeymoon in Sulawesi, saw a strange brown fish being wheeled through a market in Manado and recognised it as a coelacanth. In 1998 local fishermen caught another, which he photographed and studied.
Explanations offered
It turned out to be a separate species, the Indonesian coelacanth, described in 1999. Local fishermen already knew the fish, calling it raja laut, 'king of the sea'. Its discovery so far from Africa showed how little is known about where these deep-water fish live.
- When
- September 1997
- Where
- Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia
- Witnesses
- The marine biologist Mark Erdmann, and local fishermen
- Status
- Confirmed
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