It has survived millions of years in caves deep beneath the sea, but now it could be threatened by offshore oil and gas exploration.
Speaking at the 5th African Marine Mammal Colloquium at Bayworld this week, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife marine ecologist Dr Jennifer Olbers said the coast of KwaZulu-Natal and the northern part of the Eastern Cape was riddled with offshore canyons that sheltered the iconic coelacanth, one of the rarest fishes in the world.
She said the vulnerability of this habitat, considering seismic surveys undertaken by petroleum exploration firms in the area, had to be considered.
“Are the canyon walls not susceptible to collapse from the energy waves generated by the seismic surveys?
“I questioned this and received the reply from one environmental consultant that ‘the force is equivalent of a horse standing on the ground’. I don’t think that’s an acceptable response. The precautionary principle is being disregarded.”
Enshrined in South African environmental law, the precautionary principle states that if the consequences of a project are not known, then the project should not go ahead.
Studies have shown that coelacanths feed at night and rest up in caves up to 250m below the ocean surface.
They use a unique electrosensory “rostral organ” in their snouts to track their prey, mostly octopus and fish, swimming upside down to use it.
There are just 33 identified individual Latimer chalumnae coelacanths left, part of a population of no more than 500 in the western Indian Ocean.
There is a separate small population of the coelacanth species Latimeria menadoensis off Indonesia.
Coelacanths were thought to have become extinct around 70 million years ago.
But a specimen was discovered in 1938 at a fish market on the Chalumna River by then East London Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, and identified by Rhodes University icthyologist JLB Smith.
“Five feet long with four limb-like fins and a strange puppy-dog tail”, as CourtenayLatimer described it, the specimen is on display today at the museum, a prehistoric link with the first fish to move out of the sea onto the land.
East London Museum principal scientist Kevin Cole, who has been attending the conference, also said seismic surveys were a grave concern.
Threat to endangered coelacanth
Image: Supplied
It has survived millions of years in caves deep beneath the sea, but now it could be threatened by offshore oil and gas exploration.
Speaking at the 5th African Marine Mammal Colloquium at Bayworld this week, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife marine ecologist Dr Jennifer Olbers said the coast of KwaZulu-Natal and the northern part of the Eastern Cape was riddled with offshore canyons that sheltered the iconic coelacanth, one of the rarest fishes in the world.
She said the vulnerability of this habitat, considering seismic surveys undertaken by petroleum exploration firms in the area, had to be considered.
“Are the canyon walls not susceptible to collapse from the energy waves generated by the seismic surveys?
“I questioned this and received the reply from one environmental consultant that ‘the force is equivalent of a horse standing on the ground’. I don’t think that’s an acceptable response. The precautionary principle is being disregarded.”
Enshrined in South African environmental law, the precautionary principle states that if the consequences of a project are not known, then the project should not go ahead.
Studies have shown that coelacanths feed at night and rest up in caves up to 250m below the ocean surface.
They use a unique electrosensory “rostral organ” in their snouts to track their prey, mostly octopus and fish, swimming upside down to use it.
There are just 33 identified individual Latimer chalumnae coelacanths left, part of a population of no more than 500 in the western Indian Ocean.
There is a separate small population of the coelacanth species Latimeria menadoensis off Indonesia.
Coelacanths were thought to have become extinct around 70 million years ago.
But a specimen was discovered in 1938 at a fish market on the Chalumna River by then East London Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, and identified by Rhodes University icthyologist JLB Smith.
“Five feet long with four limb-like fins and a strange puppy-dog tail”, as CourtenayLatimer described it, the specimen is on display today at the museum, a prehistoric link with the first fish to move out of the sea onto the land.
East London Museum principal scientist Kevin Cole, who has been attending the conference, also said seismic surveys were a grave concern.
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