Dinofish.com's first South Pacific Coelacanth Expedition
(SoPac I)
In 2006 Jerome Hamlin (me) at dinofish.com, received a curious email claiming the existence of coelacanths in the South Pacific. Many messages like this have come in over the years, so they are all treated with a healthy skepticism. In fact there had been a claim of a coelacanth at Tahiti which was never further corroborated. There have been claims from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and from Bermuda and Florida to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean which were never verified. But there were also claims from Indonesia, Madagascar, and Kenya, which turned out to be true. This most recent claim from the South Pacific, had a terse, sparse quality to it, as if the person was completely disinterested. The location was also intriguing. For fishermen to be catching coelacanths without the whole world knowing about it, they would have to be very isolated, the area would have to have what I call "the necessary ignorance" such that the fishermen and those around them would not know that they were catching coelacanths. This had been the case in the Comoros, and again in Sulawesi, Indonesia. And now this new location seemed to fit that bill. In fact it seemed like, "The Last Place on Earth." So the new claim had a ring of truth to it. A year later on the basis of a few lines of text, and a lot of preplanning, I packed my bags, once again, for the other side of the planet.
KNOWN COELACANTH CATCHES AND HABITATS WITH A QUESTION MARK ON THE SOLOMONS
In presenting the results of the expedition, I am withholding, for now, the specific island and village names to protect the area from potential unwanted human interference. This may change, however, if accredited research projects materialize. Suffice it to say, I am talking about the Solomon Islands, the scene of some of the most brutal campaigns of WWII. As coelacanths generally are living at depths below normal SCUBA diving operations, the research technique is to visit fish markets and the fishermen themselves in their villages. In conducting interviews with fishermen who in almost all cases don't speak English, I use an interpreter and a picture of three fish, two of which are controls, and one of which is a coelacanth. The first control fish is a freshwater lake fish. If that fish is identified you know something is not right. The second fish is a grouper which looks something like a coelacanth and can be the same size. Varieties of grouper are common world wide and it is important for the fisherman to distinguish the grouper from a potential coelacanth. It is important to note that the pictures do not always work properly. In Madagascar, the lake fish was often identified as a tuna, and sometimes a fisherman will identify the coelacanth positively, but say that the fish he knows has different fins! One way you know things are working properly is to have some negative results, the fisherman does not know the coelacanth, but knows the grouper. This happened on the first islands I visited in the Solomons and was perversely reassuring given what happened later. I also carried an actual photograph of a coelacanth caught in the Comoros to show what one looked like having been caught and placed on the ground. No one was paid for the interviews and the Solomons do not recognize tipping as a custom. Now I'll report the best cases and you decide!
THE SOUTH PACIFIC AND THE SOLOMON ISANDS
Fish Identification Sheet
CASE #1 John Bana
I visited the village mentioned in the email. With me was a translator (English-Pidgn) and arranger I hired at the small rest house where I was staying. The villagers remembered the sender of the email. They said that in the past he and his wife had anchored off their village in a yacht several times and his wife had been a teacher in the village before that. At the time of one of their visits, a strange fish had been caught. A woman remembered the fish. They said it was the same as the one in my picture. The fisherman, John Bana, has since died (someone said in '89). The fishing area is a ways off shore, off a steep drop off. The fishermen use nylon fishing line which comes in coils that they connect together for greater length. One coil is 40 meters. They might use as many as ten. There were no physical remains left of the fish.
Case #1 group discusses the fish..........Solomon Islands fishing rig.....fishing line coils for sale at a general store....
CASE#2 Joseph
We walked for hours through the jungle and along a beach to reach a village to interview a fisherman named Thomas. Along the way we met two groups of men and showed them the picture. In the first group, one of them, named Joseph, after careful scrutiny, said he recognized the fish in the picture we showed him. He had caught one two years ago (2005).Two others in this group, John and Mark, said they saw the fish Thomas had caught and it was the same as the one in the picture. In the second group, a man named Jacob said he saw the one Joseph caught. And he said the skin was rough like sand paper. They had no name for the fish as it was very rare. It came out that rare odd looking fish are considered bad luck and are often cut free. My translator called them ghosts.
My interpreter preceeds me on the walk to the village of Thomas ...Joseph (green shirt) gets a dinofish.com contact card ...Jacob, left , identifies the fish from the sheet held by my interpreter.
CASE#3 Thomas
We reached the village and quickly found Thomas. Thomas studied the coelacanth picture for half a minute before agreeing that this was what he caught. He said he caught his inside the reef and it was small- about two feet. He identified the mouth and fin structure. He said he did not cook it and threw it back after showing it to people. He showed it to John and Mark (from the first group)who said it was the same as in our picture when they saw our picture on our walk to the village. They were with Thomas when he caught it. Thomas was shown the picture of the Comoran fish on the ground and he said he was certain that was what he caught.
Thomas identifies the coelacanth from the sheet, and then from the picture of the Comoran coelacanth catch ...A Solomon fishing dugout.
(Coelacanth photo courtesy Said Ahamada. All other photos by the author)
CASE#4 Peter Takolo
The man where my translator was buying boat fuel said a friend of his had caught this fish in the early '90's and sold it to fish trader in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. We went to that place and interviewed the fisherman, Peter Takolo, as he pointed to the location where he caught the fish. The fish was 60 to 70 kilos and had a tail like the palm leaf fans that are used in the islands. He caught it at 300 to 400 meters. The body was full of grease when they cut the fish open. He had caught the fish at night.
Peter Takolo points to where he caught the fish................A palm leaf fan used locally
CASE#5 Michael Ming
A fisherman was visiting from a village on the other side of the island. His name was Michael Ming. He had told my interpreter he had caught a strange fish like the one we are looking for some years back. Michael caught his fish about 1978 and we marked the spot on the map. It was only a couple of feet long. After showing it to many nearby fishermen, he cut it loose fearing it as an unknown. He caught the fish at sunrise, having left his village before dawn. He used ten coils, probably having twelve on his float wrapper. He used the Kura technique which he later demonstrated for me as I recorded a video clip. He said the skin was rough. I forgot to bring the photos so I pointed to my Dinofish.com glowcanth shirt and he said “That’s the fish!” with a smile. Later, he mentioned a deck of playing cards and said the tail was like the club design on a club card!
Michael Ming (left) with interpreter... Ace of Clubs
The Kura fishing technique is amazingly similar to the maze technique used in the Comoros. Both are designed to make deep water hand lining possible. They solve the problem of getting the hook and bait to the bottom in current, and then have the hook and bait float free of the sinker weights so the fisherman can feel a strike on the line. In maze, the fishing line is placed between two stones with the hook and bait hanging free. The line is then wrapped around the stones several times, and a bit is tucked under the wrap to hold the wrapping tight.. The whole kit is thrown overboard and when it hits bottom, the fisherman jerks the line releasing the stones and setting the hook and bait free at great depth. Kura accomplishes the same thing. The difference is that one stone is wrapped with a palm leaf and the hook is then set into the leaf. When the rig hits bottom, the fisherman jerks the hook and it tears through the leaf and floats free of the rock with the bait. Having been to the Comoros many times, I was amazed at this slight variation of technique accomplishing the same thing. And both perfect for reaching coelacanth depths!
Michael Ming demonstrates a Kura rig. The hook is in the palm leaf below his right hand.
Video Clip: Michael Ming demonstrates a Kura rig (Broadband only!)
Video Clip: Michael Ming pulls the hook (Broadband only!)
Arrangements have been made for future catches in the area to be reported to dinofish.com - Jerome Hamlin
