fish documentary

[crickets] [cymbal plays] [chime] [piano plays] [ahlberg:] you have this fish that's...

it's like a sort of living time machine. [weinberg:]: it waslike looking at a dinosaur. this creature that has been aroundfor 400 million years. [thomson:] it was decemberthe 22nd, 1938.

on this hot, december dayin east london south africa, a trawler came into townand deposited its load of fish. and the trawler captain had a habit of keepingany odd-looking interesting specimens and giving them to the curatorof the local museum, marjorie courtenay latimer. [weinberg:] she loved nature so much, and she wanted to makethe museum's collections the best they possibly could be,

and so she went down to the harbor-side. she described picking throughthis big pile of slimy fish and eels, and then suddenly she saw, poking up,this sort of strange, blue fin. [ahlberg:] it's a very distinctive kindof fish with strange fleshy limb-like fins. this thing was like nothingshe'd ever seen. [weinberg:] she said to the chairman of the museum, "i thinkthis is something really special." he went, "oh no, little latimer,

it's just a rock cod." but she knew in her gut that it was something different. and she thought, "well,i've got to find a way to preserve it." so she set off on christmas evein east london. [thomson:]: she tried to get the local cold storage companyto take care of it... [weinberg:] they said,"ugh, no way, go away." [thomson:]: she tried to getthe local mortuary to embalm it...

[weinberg:] they said, "oh,we can't have any stinking fish here!" she said "why? all the other peoplein here are dead anyway." [thomson:]: and so eventually it was given to a taxidermist. [weinberg:] and she thought,well, i've got to find someone to identify this fish. and she immediatelythought of professor jlb smith. [thomson:]: who wasthe only ichthyologist in south africa.

[weinberg:] so she drew a roughlittle drawing, and sent a letter. [music plays] [weinberg:] soon as he saw the fish, he walked round and round it slowly. [thomson:]: he practically fainted. [weinberg:] he said, "it was like bombsgoing off in my head, and i was seeing the shape of a fishknown only from fossils." [ahlberg:] it's sucha characteristic shape. it's like the outline of a viking ship.

[weinberg:] this was the coelacanth. a fish that was thought to have becomeextinct 65 million years ago. it was like a dinosaurhad just come into your living room! [ahlberg:] you know, 400 million yearsago these were just a bunch of fishes very much like other kinds of fishthat were around at the time. but now theyare these absolute anomalies. there's nothingelse like it on the planet. [thomson:]: they had in factmade the discovery of the century. [ahlberg:] it was giventhe name latimeria chalumnae,

in honor of marjorie courtenay latimer. [thomson:]: without her, the specimenwouldn't have been preserved. [ahlberg:] the key excitement was the fact that this wassuch an obvious living fossil. [thomson:]: charles darwincame up with the term. it's sort of dumb in a way, because if it's aliveit can't be a fossil. but what it means is,there's an early fossil record, then a total gap, and thenthere happens to be a living one.

it doesn't mean that hundredsand hundreds of its relatives haven't become extinct. [weinberg:] one of the thingsthat i love about the coelacanth is that it's seen history past. [ahlberg:] when the coelacanthsfirst appeared, as one lineageof lobe-finned fishes among other similar-looking forms, well,what can you say about the world? they shared the waterswith strange armored jawless fish with sucker-like mouths.

one lineage of their close relativesstarted nosing around in the shallows and then i supposefrom the coelacanth's perspective just sort of disappeared out of viewas they emerged onto land. [weinberg:] and i like to sortof think of the coelacanth as saying "bye, good luck!" [ahlberg:] we get into the periodof the coal swamps, producing so much oxygenthat it becomes possible for dragonflies the size of falconsand millipedes longer than a man. the world is suddenly struckby a gigantic mass extinction.

something like 90%of all species disappear. coelacanths sort of keep going. they've perhaps taken a bit of a knock,but there are quite a lot of them. they swim around,doing their coelacanth thing. another huge mass extinction. then, mammals diversify on the land. primates emerge. one primate lineage starts standing upon its hind limbs, starts speaking, and here we are.

and meanwhile, coelacanths, well,they haven't really changed. that is a truly astonishing thing. for me personally, it is just that the worldshould have such things in it. that it should be possibleto see this kind of improbable ghostly messengerfrom the very deep past. [weinberg:] and i just hope that thecoelacanth manages to outlive us all, and keep going and witnessingwhat is to come.