What happened
In September 1997, marine biologist Mark Erdmann and his wife Arnaz Mehta, on their honeymoon in Manado in northern Sulawesi, saw a strange brown fish at a fish market. Erdmann recognized it as a coelacanth – known until then only from the waters around the Comoros and East Africa, about 10,000 kilometers away. He managed to take a few photographs before the fish was sold. After confirming that this was an extraordinary discovery, he returned in November to question fishermen and look for more specimens. In July 1998, a local fisherman caught a second fish in a deep-water net and handed it over to Erdmann. Studies confirmed that it was a distinct species, described in 1999 as Latimeria menadoensis.
Witnesses
Mark Erdmann and Arnaz Mehta, and in 1998 the local fisherman who caught the second specimen.
Explanations and hypotheses
The discovery of a second coelacanth species showed that large marine animals can escape the notice of science for decades, even though local fishermen know them well. Indonesian coelacanths live in deep waters from northern Sulawesi to Papua, and genetic studies suggest that their populations may comprise more than one species. For cryptozoologists it is another argument for listening carefully to local accounts; for zoologists, a reminder of how poorly explored the deep sea is.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
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