Something fishy in this

On Christmas Eve 1938 a young woman made an extraordinary discovery at the East London harbour.

Dubbed by some “The Christmas Fish” and others, the “Eureka fish”, the first specimen known to science of a “living” coelacanth was found by Marjorie Courtenay Latimer, a curator at the East London Museum, among fisherman André Goosen’s catch on the trawler, Nerine.

Up to that time this mysterious, electric blue, deep sea fish, had been believed by scientists to be extinct because the only evidence of its existence had been in fossils millions of years old.

Latimer sent a sketch of the fish to Professor JLB Smith who identified it and confirmed it was indeed a coelacanth – “the biological find of the century”.

The small display in SAIAB’s foyer follows the history of this momentous discovery.

This is the Ichthyological legacy upon which SAIAB as we know it today was founded. The public can see two full-size coelacanth specimens. After the first discovery in 1938, Smith’s life’s obsession became to find another coelacanth – he had to wait 14 long years.

One of the coelacanths on display is the actual “£100 Reward Fish” discovered in 1952 in the Comoros Islands – so named as this was the amount offered as a reward for information that might lead to such a find. The fish was flown to Grahamstown in a SA Defence Force Dakota aeroplane.

SAIAB also has a freshwater aquarium. Doors are open between 8am and 4.30pm Monday to Friday.

SAIAB will be closed from 24 December to 2 January.