West Indian Ocean coelacanth.

Where to find it.

The western Indian Ocean, mainly around the Comoros, with records off South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya and Tanzania.

Also known as Coelacanth, Gombessa.

A closer look.

Steel blue with irregular white blotches that identify each individual. The pectoral, pelvic, anal and second dorsal fins sit on fleshy, limb-like lobes, and the tail has a small extra lobe in the middle.

How it lives.

By day coelacanths rest in groups in caves on steep volcanic slopes at about 150–250 m. At night they drift out to feed. They move their paired fins in alternation, much as four-legged animals move their legs.

The next generation.

Gives birth to live young. A 2021 study estimated a pregnancy of about five years and sexual maturity at around 55 years of age.

Conservation

Critically Endangered. The total population is very small; the main threat is bycatch in deep-water fishing.

Critically Endangered — global IUCN assessment dated 30 June 2000. Regional populations can have a different status. View the Red List record ↗

In the margins.

• The museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer recognised the catch in 1938; the ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith described it and named the genus after her.
• A second species, Latimeria menadoensis, was found in Indonesia in 1997–98.
• There is no 18th-century plate here because there could not be one: this is a photograph of a museum specimen.