Second Group of Living Fossils Reported

A second population of one of the most sought-after fish on the planet, the coelacanth, has turned up because a honeymooning reef ecologist got out of a taxi at the right moment.

 Mark V. Erdmann, a University of California, Berkeley biologist working in Indonesia, spotted a dead coelacanth on a handcart as he and his bride arrived at a fish market a year ago. Another catch this July, as well as local lore, convinced Erdmann that the Indonesian island of Manado Tua has living fossils in its reefs. If genetic analysis and further exploring prove him right, Indonesian coelacanths will complement the only ones previously known, a group living in waters outside Africa's Comoro Archipelago, 10,000 kilometers west.

 The notion that coelacanths survive in just two groups so far apart strikes Erdmann as unlikely, and he hopes for more discoveries. "This should be welcome news for coelacanth conservation," Erdmann and his colleagues write in the Sept. 24 Nature.

 The news shouldn't be too welcome, though, cautions coauthor Roy L. Caldwell, also from Berkeley. Sightings have been so rare that he can't believe the fish is common. "The worst possible thing that could happen is if people make that assumption and the interest in protecting the Comoro population decreased," he says.

 That's worrisome, agrees Hans Fricke, a coelacanth specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen, Germany. "I feel deep sadness for the Comorans," Fricke says. "They were very proud to be the only ones on Earth to have this fish."

 Fricke takes seriously the evidence for a second coelacanth homeland. Neither storms nor currents could sweep the African fish as far as Indonesia, he says. "I'm convinced that this is a new population."

 That conclusion seems reasonable to David L.G. Noakes, who studies coelacanths at the University of Guelph in Ontario. He frets about the potential for a black market, even though an international treaty protects the fish. "You can't do much with it other than hide it under the bed," Noakes fumes. He also fiercely condemns a myth that the fish's notochord fluid brings eternal life.

 Coelacanths are interesting in their own right, he says. Their fins move like the limbs of animals walking on land, and they are cousins to lungfish, the oldest living relatives of tetrapods. Also, coelacanths bear live young. Inside the female, the eggs are "big as a grapefruit, the largest in any animal," Noakes reports.

 Until 1938, scientists knew coelacanths only from fossils, which petered out some 80 million years ago. Then a trawler brought a living specimen up off South Africa, sparking fevered searching. Jacques Cousteau failed to find one, and Japan's Toba Aquarium spent millions to no avail.

 Erdmann followed the dramas avidly as a boy but hadn't kept up, so he didn't know whether scientists had reported an Indonesian population. "Probably the stupidest thing I ever did was not buy that fish," he says.

 Erdmann did take a few pictures. Only when he showed them to Caldwell did he learn the importance of the fish he let get away. Erdmann spent almost a year interviewing fishermen before a crew brought him another coelacanth, feebly alive. None had ever survived capture, so he and his wife put the fish back into the water and donned scuba gear to accompany it on its slow, final swim. He says, "That was a magical experience."