Diver Alan Fraser made a fascinating discovery earlier today when he stumbled across a rare coelacanth off Pumula on the South Coast of KwaZulu-Natal.

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Alan, fondly known as Moo, was diving with his father, Mike, as well as Bruce Henderson, CEO of Rhodes Foods and his dive buddy Mossie Carstens, when they stumbled across this rare fish at the depth of 72 metres off Pumula.

“I think this is the first time a coelacanth has been seen by divers and photographed outside of the Sodwana Marine Protected Area,” said Mike.

“I took the guys to a spot that I thought it might be found. We were exploring and were very fortunate to see it,” said Alan, speaking to the Herald while out at sea, fishing.

He said it was a ‘lekker’ discovery, describing the experience as ‘surreal’.

Alan and Mike were happy Bruce, who is from Cape Town, had a GoPro 7 in a 150m housing to film it.

“Spotting a coelacanth underwater has been at the top of Bruce’s bucket list for ages. It’s a special experience when you’re diving on a reef you’ve dreamed about and never dived before, then your son finds you one of these. Moo was shouting so loudly underwater I thought he had spotted a megalodon. When I got close enough to see the ancient creature I suspected that the nitrogen had got to me and over-ridden the rich helium mix. Luckily not!” – Mike on Facebook

According to Wikipedia, the coelacanths constitute a now rare order of fish that includes two extant species in the genus Latimeria: the West Indian Ocean coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) primarily found near the Comoro Islands off the east coast of Africa and the Indonesian coelacanth (Latimeria menadoensis).

They follow the oldest-known living lineage of Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish and tetrapods), which means they are more closely related to lungfish and tetrapods than to ray-finned fish.

They are found along the coastlines of the Indian Ocean and Indonesia.

The West Indian Ocean coelacanth is a critically endangered species.

Wikipedia goes on to explain that coelacanths were thought to have become extinct in the Late Cretaceous, around 66 million years ago, but were rediscovered in 1938 off the coast of South Africa.

“The coelacanth was long considered a ‘living fossil’ because scientists thought it was the sole remaining member of a taxon otherwise known only from fossils, with no close relations alive, and that it evolved into roughly its current form about 400 million years ago.”

However, several recent studies have shown that coelacanth body shapes are much more diverse than previously thought.

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