Museum Curator Finds Living Coelacanth in 1938 Trawl Catch

On December 22, 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum in South Africa, spotted a strange five-foot-long blue fish with stout fins and a short tail among the unwanted catch of the trawler Nerine. The fish, pulled from waters near the Chalumna River, turned out to be a coelacanth, a species scientists had known only from fossils and believed extinct for 66 million years. Captain Hendrik Goosen had called her to check the deck full of garbage fish, leading to one of the biggest surprises in marine biology.

Background

Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer started working at the East London Museum in 1931. She spent her days collecting rocks, feathers, shells, and odd items for displays. She often asked local fishermen to let her see their unusual catches. The museum sat in East London, a coastal town where trawlers brought in fish from the Indian Ocean.

Coelacanths appeared in fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago. Scientists called them lobe-finned fish, with thick fins that looked like legs. The last fossils dated back to the time when dinosaurs died out, around 66 million years ago. No one expected to find one alive. Books and papers listed them as long gone.

Courtenay-Latimer, born in 1907, had trained in art and nature studies. She kept an eye out for anything new. Fishermen knew her as the person to call for weird finds. The Nerine had just returned from a trip with a cold water upwelling near the Chalumna River mouth, about 50 miles west of East London. These upwellings sometimes brought deep-sea creatures to the surface.

Captain Goosen saw the blue fish in his net and set it aside. He phoned Courtenay-Latimer right away. She took a taxi to the dock that day, ready to sort through the pile.

Key Details

Courtenay-Latimer climbed aboard and dug through the slimy heap. The fish stood out: bright blue, about five feet long, with four strong fins and a stubby tail. It did not look like any local species. She noted its strange shape and scales.

She tried calling J.L.B. Smith, an ichthyologist in Grahamstown, but he was away. So she sketched the fish and wrote him a letter. She described it as unusual and asked him to come quickly. The letter included her drawing, sent by mail.

Smith got the letter on January 3, 1939, while at his holiday home. He saw the sketch and guessed it was a coelacanth, a living fossil from the order Actinistia. He sent a telegram urging her to preserve it. But by then, the fish had started to rot in the heat. Courtenay-Latimer had the soft parts removed and the body stuffed for the museum.

Smith Confirms the Find

Smith traveled to East London on February 16, 1939. He examined the mounted specimen. The flesh was gone, but the bones and shape matched coelacanth fossils.

"There was not a shadow of a doubt," Smith said. "It could have been one of those creatures of 200 million years ago come alive again."

He named it Latimeria chalumnae, using her first name for the genus and the river for the species. Smith announced it in a letter to Nature magazine on March 18, 1939. A full paper followed in 1940 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa.

The fish went on display at the East London Museum. A plaque now marks the dock where it landed. South Africa issued stamps in 1989 honoring the discovery.

Courtenay-Latimer kept working at the museum until 1973. She died in 2004 at age 97.

What This Means

The find proved some ancient sea creatures still lived in deep waters. For 14 years, it was the only known specimen. Then, in 1952, fishermen in the Comoro Islands caught another. Smith rushed there and saw it fresh. He offered rewards for more, printing leaflets along African coasts.

More coelacanths turned up over time. Divers have filmed them alive in their habitats. They live deep, around 400 to 2,000 feet, in caves and on slopes. The Comoros remain a main spot, but others came from Indonesia and Mozambique.

One from Mozambique in the 1980s had 26 preserved pups inside, showing they give live birth, not lay eggs. This matched some old ideas but added details. The first one from East London might have been a stray from deeper ranges.

Scientists learned coelacanths move slowly, use their fins like limbs, and have small brains. They link fish to land animals in evolution. The discovery opened study of 'living fossils' and deep-sea life.

Today, coelacanths face threats from fishing and habitat changes. Groups track them to protect populations. Museums worldwide display models and casts. The East London specimen remains a key piece of history.

Smith searched coasts during and after World War II. His trips covered East Africa. The second find led to name confusion at first—called Malania anjouanae—but later corrected to Latimeria chalumnae.

The story shows how one alert person can shift science. Fishermen and curators now report odd catches faster. Deep-sea tech like submersibles has spotted more without harm.