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They can be found near the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean and off Sulawesi, Indonesia. However, due to the continued interest in shark fins and oil in the Chinese marketplace, fishers in southwestern Madagascar are posing a threat to the coelacanths’ lives as they set gill-nets in deeper waters called jarifa gill-nets.
The Western Indian Ocean species, Latimeria chalumnae, has been classified as critically endangered by the IUCN, while a similar Indonesian counterpart (L. menadoensis) is classified as vulnerable.
“When we looked into this further, we were astounded [by the numbers caught]… even though there has been no proactive process in Madagascar to monitor or conserve coelacanths,” said Andrew Cooke, a lead author in the new study in the SA Journal of Science that reviews the data for specimens, according to Mongabay.
Ghost fish: after 420 million years in the deeps, modern gillnets from shark fin trade drag coelacanths into the light
by Tony Carnie on 12 May 2021
Undersea canyons off Madagascar may turn out to be the Indian Ocean epicentre for coelacanths, the remarkable “fossil fish” which re-surfaced from apparent extinction in 1938.
Coelacanths have turned up with unexpected frequency in gill-nets set in deep waters to catch sharks for new, commercial markets.
A worrying trend in recent coelacanth catches in Madagascar is the high proportion of pregnant females, which are thought to produce just 140 live babies during their entire lifecycle.
Marine scientists are calling for reinforcement of conservation measures to protect this population from the pressure of incidental gill-net captures driven by the shark fin trade.