Wildlife

Madagascar may be a secret stronghold for Coelacanths ‘living fossil’ fish

Madagascar may be a secret stronghold for coelacanths, the “living fossil” fish that were considered extinct until a fisherman caught one in 1938 off South Africa.

Coelacanths of the same species — Latimeria chalumnae — have since turned up off Tanzania, the Comoros (a group of islands off the eastern coast of Africa) and Madagascar. Now, a new review of the Madagascar fishery bycatch, or accidental catch, reveals that at least 34 confirmed specimens have been caught and that many more likely have been pulled up that never reached the attention of biologists or conservationists. Though the overall population numbers remain a mystery, the authors of the new study suspect that Madagascar may be an important habitat for coelacanths and that it may even be their ancestral home.

With 420 million years of history behind them, coelacanths are older than Madagascar, which has had a coastline for 88 million years and has been in its current location for about 40 million years.

These fish evolved 180 million years before the dinosaurs first emerged, surviving even as continents shifted and an asteroid wiped out much of life on Earth, including marine “sea monsters” like mosasaurs. Known first from fossils, coelacanths were believed extinct until a trawler caught one in a gill net in December 1938 near South Africa.

Great white shark population off California’s coast is growing

The great white shark population off Northern California’s coast is healthy and growing, a new study finds.

A survey of the great whites (Carcharodon carcharias) off the northern coast finds a stable adult population and a slight uptick in the number of subadult sharks, totaling 300 individuals. Researchers used a seal decoy to lure the apex predators to their boats so they could photograph and count the sharks. The findings are great for the region.

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