Finding the Coelacanths

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first Coelacanth was discovered by a woman in South Africa in 1938. The find, by the young museum curator, was the fish equivalent of discovering a T- Rex on the Serengeti, it took the Zoological world by storm. Presenter Adam Hart tells the story of this discovery, and the steps taken by Coelacanth biologists in the decades since to find more fish, in other populations, and record them for science. Adam hears personal accounts from a deep diver who swam with Coelacanths, Eve Marshall, conservationist Dr Mark Erdman, and geneticist Professor Axel Meyer. Picture: 3 Coelacanths at 116 metres depth in Sodwana Bay, South Africa, Credit: Eve Marshall Producer: Rory Galloway

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're
0:24.7	doing the wrong thing.
0:25.9	Julie, at your service.
0:27.8	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. East London, South Africa, 23rd of December 1938. Dear Dr. Smith, I had the most queer
0:40.8	looking specimen brought to notice yesterday.
0:44.0	Fish mean more to some of us than others, I suppose.
0:47.5	This is a very, very unusual fish,
0:49.2	and some people have compared the discovery of this fish
0:51.8	to finding dinosaurs on the Congo basin or in South Africa and the Amazon.
0:58.0	It's not often a fish gets quite this introduction, but this is not just any fish. This is the sea lecant. A prehistoric deep sea fish that was
1:08.3	for many years thought to be long extinct. I'm Professor Adam Hart and in this series for discovery I'm exploring the genius of accidents. In zoology, you don't get much more unexpected or accidental than this.
1:21.0	It is coated in heavy scales, almost armor-like, the fins resemble
1:26.7	limbs and are scaled right up to a fringe of filament. The spines dorsal has tiny white spines down each filament.
1:34.4	Note drawing in red.
1:37.4	This description was in a letter written a day before Christmas Eve in 1938 by a Miss Marjorie Courtney Latimer.
	...

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