November 2013
Contents / home
Science Olympiad winners in London
Advancing S&T across Africa
SA Science Lens competition
Name the CubeSat and win
SAASTA reports on touching lives
75 years of coelacanth research
Limpopo takes honours in debates
SAASTA wins at Sasol Techno X
Free State school wins quiz
National Science Week
Meet Prof. Tebello Nyokong
My journey with SAEON
Zookies fight against rhino poaching
ZooClub vulture conservation efforts
Science worth knowing ...
SAEON Education symposium
In the news
Upcoming events
It's a fact!

Celebrating 75 years of coelacanth research

 
  The Indonesian “King of the Sea” was discovered in 1997/98 on the island of Sulawesi
 
  Range of the two coelacanth species
 
  In March-April 2002, the Jago Submersible and Fricke Dive Team descended into the depths off the northeast coast of South Africa at Sodwana Bay and observed 15 coelacanths, one pregnant
 
  Submersible and ROV observations of the Sodwana coelacanths continue as part of the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme
 
  An ROV is launched from the National Research Foundation’s research boat uKwabelana
This year it is 75 years since the first living coelacanth was found off the coast of South Africa. This is the third in a series of articles that GetSETgo will be featuring on this amazing discovery of a living fish, which had disappeared from fossil records 70 million years ago.

In the previous issues, we touched on the "discovery" of the unusual fish among the catch of a trawler at East London by Marjory Courtenay-Latimer; how she tried to preserve it and mailed chemist and fish fundi Professor JLB Smith of Rhodes University about the find; and how he identified the fish. Fifteen years later, Smith could at last piece together the puzzle of the fish's soft anatomy and examine a body plan when an intact specimen was discovered in the Comoro Islands.

More discoveries and the start of the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme

It was assumed that living coelacanths were confined to small populations off the East African coast and that Courtenay-Latimer’s original find had drifted down from the north on currents in the Mozambique Channel. The Comoro islands were therefore considered to be the home turf of the coelacanth, and this premise went unchallenged until the 1990s, when two of the fish were trawled off Madagascar. However, these were also thought to have been drifters.

Another shock for the scientific community

The discovery in 1997/98 of a second coelacanth species in Indonesia, Latimeria menadoensis, therefore came as a big surprise.

While on honeymoon, University of California Berkeley researcher Dr Mark Erdmann and his wife Arnaz discovered a coelacanth that was netted off Manado Tua Island, Sulawesi, thousands of kilometres east of the Comoros, in a fish market. They photographed the fish, but unfortunately did not buy or preserve it.

Later that year, Erdmann returned in search of another coelacanth. During a five-month period he interviewed over 200 fishermen in the coastal villages around North Sulawesi, but found very few fishermen who seemed familiar with the fish. Finally, he interviewed two fishermen who said they occasionally caught the coelacanth, which they called raja laut, translated as, "king of the sea".

After careful monitoring of their catch for several months, Erdmann was rewarded with a second Sulawesi coelacanth on 30 July 1998. It was assumed that this fish had to be part of a distinct non-Comorian population, and DNA studies later indicated that this is indeed a different species. The populations seem to have separated 200 000 to 2 million years ago.

The announcement by Erdmann et al. of the capture and preservation of a living coelacanth almost 10 000 kilometres from the Comoros appeared as a cover story in the journal Nature (Erdmann, M.V., Caldwell, R.L., and Moosa, M.K. 1998. "Indonesian 'King of the Sea' Discovered" Nature v.395:335). The discovery was also featured on television and radio as well as in newspaper articles around the world; including CNN, ABC News, and National Geographic. Discover magazine even listed the discovery as one of the top science stories of 1998.

Southern Africa – the search continues

Divers continued to report sightings of coelacanths in shallow water in the vicinity of Madagascar, but without material evidence. As coelacanths were only known to live at depths of several hundred metres in the Comoros, these accounts seemed improbable. In South Africa, the search continued on and off over the years.

Luck in the search changed quite accidentally on 28 October 2000 when, off the northeast coast of South Africa at Sodwana Bay, deep divers Pieter Venter, Peter Timm and Etienne le Roux made a dive to 104 metres using a mixture of diving gases and came across three coelacanths. They did not expect to find anything like this and they therefore had no cameras. The group decided they would return with cameras to film the shallowest confirmed sighting of coelacanths.

Calling themselves "SA Coelacanth Expedition 2000" the group, with several additional members, performed a first dive without seeing coelacanths. On 27 November 2000, Pieter Venter, Gilbert Gunn and cameramen Christo Serfontein and Dennis Harding, assisted by a five-member team, went down again to a depth of 115 metres and found three coelacanths. The fish swam heads down and appeared to be feeding off ledges. The cameramen took video footage and still photos of the three.

Then disaster struck. Assisting Serfontein, who had passed out under water, 34-year-old Dennis Harding rose to the surface with him in an uncontrolled ascent and died in the boat despite attempts by fellow divers to resuscitate him. Serfontein recovered after being taken back underwater for decompression.

The find was big news and the then South African Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister, Mohammed Valli Moosa, took immediate measures to further protect the fish and put it off limits to divers without special permits while research protocols were established.

The original dive group returned to Sodwana in May 2001 and filmed additional coelacanths. In March-April 2002, the Jago Submersible and Fricke Dive Team descended into the depths off Sodwana and observed 15 coelacanths, one pregnant. Some of these had been photographed before, indicating likely residency. In all, 18 individuals were identified. Tissue samples were taken using a dart probe. DNA analysis in Germany concluded that although the South African colonies were breeding groups, they were genetically identical to the Comorian fish. They were satellite colonies.

Submersible and ROV observations of the Sodwana coelacanths continued. Meanwhile, the discovery of the "new" South African coelacanths led to the establishment of the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme (ACEP), a flagship programme of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), funded directly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

ACEP was one of the first multi-disciplinary, multi-national research programmes to conduct extensive ecosystem-based research in the Western Indian Ocean. During the first phase of this programme, conferences and field research expeditions were organised, a student teaching vessel was operated, and coelacanth reports from Africa and the Comoros were monitored.

Dives by the submersible Jago continued until 2004. In May 2005, a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) replaced the submersible Jago in the investigation of the South African coelacanths. Eight coelacanths were sighted at 110 metres on one dive, and one on a dive the day before. Some were the same individuals identified by Jago and some were new.

During a series of dives in January and February of 2010, a team led by globally renowned diver and naturalist Laurent Ballesta took a series of photographs that were published in National Geographic: March 2011. A film aired in the spring of 2012 on the National Geographic Channel.

Sources: www.saiab.ac.za; www.dinofish.com; wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth; www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

The African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme continues

The second phase of ACEP started in 2007 and ran until 2011, forming the South African component of the Agulhas and Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystems (ASCLME) Project funded by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme. ACEP is a joint project between the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA).

The National Research Foundation (NRF) acts as the implementing agency for DST. During the course of ACEP II, SAIAB, as a National Facility, has successfully provided research platforms through ACEP II which are normally beyond the ability of a single organisation to provide. In terms of marine research, SAIAB provides access to deep-water research tools such as Remotely Operated Vehicles, research vessels, as well as SCUBA technical research teams.

ACEP is now in its third phase (ACEP III), which will run from 2012 – 2014 and aims to build on the good work done during ACEP II. Five Open-Call Projects were awarded funding and platform access for the duration of ACEP III. In addition, the ACEP Phuhlisa programme was started in 2012, focusing on providing funding, logistical support and mentorship to students from historically disadvantaged universities.

By Ina Roos, Editor: Corporate Communication, SAASTA