The Young Man and the Coelacanth

posted at 11:01 am
on Sep. 13, 2001

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The coolest thing I saw on Thursday, though, was the coelacanth, a huge prehistoric fish of which only a few specimens have been caught.  Basically, scientists found fossils of the coelacanth and determined that it had lived about 140 million years ago, and filed that away under the heading “too obscure even for Jeopardy.”  Then one day, in the ‘70s, a fish with odd blue scales and a great many teeth was caught off the coast of Madagascar.  A local enthusiast (or, well, frankly someone particularly bored that day because Madagascar didn’t exactly have a theme park or a football team to keep locals otherwise occupied) noticed the odd fish and arranged to have it sent to Grahamstown where a professor of ichthyology studied it carefully and declared it officially to be one ugly motherfucker.  No, I’m kidding, he declared it to be a coelacanth, which got scientists all excited because they’d figured it to be gone for zillions of years, and if it was still around, then it’s possible for other extinct creatures to be still around, which gives great hope to little boys all over the world wanting to ride T. Rex.

Anyway, this scientist offer I believe a $5,000 reward for another one of these fish, and settled in a few years to wait—and yes, another one was caught.  He convinced the South African military to lend him a plane to fetch it back and he immediately dissected it up and it’s now on display at the Museum of Ichthyology at Grahamstown.  I should note that both these fish were dead when they were brought onto the boats—they live at great depth and can’t handle being reeled in by a fishing boat.

In the museum, they described a diving expedition to find these fish live, and I’m afraid I didn’t take very good notes, but what basically happened is that a group of scientists and support divers dove down in this underwater valley off the coast of Africa to a depth about 110 meters, where they had about 15 minutes of air, and spent about 13 minutes looking around and then spotted three of these fish—which, I should add, are about 3 feet long and masses of muscle, with teeth and big eyes and basically a very prehistoric looking fish—in any case, they got to spend about 2 minutes looking at these living fossils and then had to come back up, and two of the scientists ran into “trouble” at about 60 meters and had to come up very rapidly, at which point they both blacked out.  One was revived and taken back down to 30 meters to finish decompressing, and then flown to a decompression chamber.  The other one never revived and died shortly afterwards.  Which, all kidding aside, makes you realize that the pursuit of science, whatever form it takes, is never without risk.  The image of the chemist stumbling out of a smoking laboratory shouting “Eureka” is overdone, to be sure, but even the study of teeny tiny insects can lead to some fatal encounters—which is why I’m quite fond of online media myself.

The forth night was a street party, literally.  Susie and I missed the shuttle bus to the local boozery that it was happening in front of, but when we stopped at a restaurant just outside the university to ask for directions, a local man offered to drive us there in his car—it was exactly the kind of thing that happens in small towns, but never in big cities, and made me want to do another good turn for a complete stranger myself as thanks.

The dinner served that night had two kinds of meat; one that the server said was “lamb” and one that she said was the “other.”  I had a bite of both, and then was asked by the person sitting next if I liked wart hog.  I said they were interesting animals.  “No,” he said, “I mean, are you enjoying the wart hog?”  Oh—that’s why it was so chewy!  It was actually quite good, though the mint sauce didn’t go nearly as well with it as the lamb.

After an interesting conversation over beers with a fellow who looked exactly like Tintin, we went home and packed.

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