ANTANANARIVO - Fishermen are netting a growing number of "fossil fish", a 400 million-year-old species, off Tanzania, suggesting trawling at greater depths as inshore fish stocks decline, a leading expert said.
The archaic species, the coelacanth, was believed to have been extinct for tens of millions of years until one was caught in South African waters in 1938.
Populations have been observed subsequently by divers and from submersibles off the Comoros Islands, Indonesia and South Africa, but few were actually caught by fishermen.
Tony Ribbink, the head of the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme, said that until September 2003 no coelacanth was known to have been caught off Tanzania but "since that time 29 have been caught".
"Nowhere else at any time in the world has there been such a rapid and devastating capture of coelacanths. Nineteen were caught over a six-month period including six in one night," he told Reuters late on Tuesday on the sidelines of a conservation conference in the Malagasy capital.
The fish are also being caught elsewhere more frequently, with a 1.7 metre (5 ft 6.92 in) female reported to have been caught off Madagascar on Sunday.
Coelacanths live at depths of over 100 metres, usually in or around deep-water canyon and cave systems.
"Fishermen are netting deeper than in the past because the shallow water resources are diminishing. These coelacanth catches are a sign of this," said Ribbink.
No coelacanth has been reported to have been caught off South Africa's coast since the 1938 specimen, which was widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest zoological finds.
The fish has changed little over the past 400 million years, making it a direct link with our distant past. It retains its fan-like tail and additional, limb-like fins, which have earned it the nick-name "Old Four Legs."
Story by Ed Stoddard
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
