The Fishy Smiths

by Mike Bruton

  This plaque commemorates Professor JLB Smith who stayed the night of 29 December 1952 in Room 47 of this Headquarters Building with the Coelacanth Malania anjouanae, after they had been flown from the island of Pamanzi in the Comores by SAAF Dakota 6832.

  1Today (January 2018) this author is more inclined to encourage the display of robotic coelacanths in public aquaria, considering that the technology now exists to make very realistic swimming models.

  CHAPTER 18

  Growth of a legend

  Significance of the coelacanth

  THE COELACANTH story captured the imagination of scientists and laypeople alike worldwide and helped to raise awareness of how little we know about marine life. As Richard Greenwell (1990) of the Society of Cryptozoology put it:

  ‘In a way, the story of the coelacanth, besides being scientifically important, represents the perfect human drama. The old fish, the sea captain, the young naturalist, the desperate professor, the prime minister, the Air Force crew, and the impossibility of it all becoming possible. I doubt if any novel or movie script could fully capture the personalities of the individuals or the dynamics of the story.’

  The discovery and description of the first coelacanth had another interesting impact, that of confirming the predictions made by palaeontologists:

  ‘Although work on fossils had reached a high level, there always remained, at least in the mind of the ordinary man, a certain degree of doubt as to whether scientists’ reconstructions of pre-historic creatures from fossil remains could be taken seriously. Did not the imagination of the scientist at times outrun his discretion? The discovery of the living Coelacanth has helped to dispel such doubts, for it has shown in convincing fashion how almost uncannily accurate have been the deductions and reconstructions of the palaeontologists’ (Smith, 1949).

  The discovery of extinct and living coelacanths also helped to support the Darwin/Wallace theory of evolution by natural selection, inter alia, by appearing in the fossil record at the right time1. It has also focused attention on that crucial evolutionary step when animals left the comfort of the sea and ventured into harsh environments on land. The crucial question in this regard is: why leave the water? The probable reason is that fishes were subjected to constantly increasing predation pressures from larger, faster or more powerful fish predators and had three choices: get bigger and faster, remain small and slow and cover yourself with armour (as many ancient fishes did), or leave the water. Those that ‘chose’ the latter took one of the boldest steps in evolution, but they were only able to do so by taking some of their salty alma mater with them in the form of their blood and cell fluids. This transition required not only massive changes in body form but also substantial adjustments to their physiology, behaviour, feeding and breeding. Of course, it was not only the fishes that underwent this monumental retooling to live on land – the crustaceans, molluscs and several other groups did so too. But the vertebrates, led by the ancestors of the lungfishes and the coelacanths, have achieved it in the grandest fashion (Dawkins, 2009; Bruton, 2015).

  Ultimately, the story of the coelacanth is about the survival of a group of fishes over hundreds of millions of years, against almost insurmountable odds, and through four major extinction events. They first evolved at least 170 million years before the dinosaurs appeared and outlasted them by surviving the Cretaceous extinction 65 million years ago. The coelacanth lineage also teaches us a great deal about ourselves and how we evolved. After all, we are nothing but advanced fishes. As Dawkins (2017) has said, ‘If a time machine could serve up to you your 200-million-greats-grandfather, you would eat him with sauce tartare and a slice of lemon. He was a fish.’

  It is now thought that fishes evolved into four-legged animals on land between 380 and 365 million years ago, about 40 million years after the first coelacanths evolved. At the beginning of this period all backboned animals were fishes but, by the end of it, there were many amphibians and reptiles on land (Dawkins, 2009; Bruton, 2015). The latest genetic evidence suggests that the lungfishes are closer to the main line of tetrapod evolution than the coelacanths, although this conclusion is still being debated, but the recent deciphering of the coelacanth genome has provided valuable insights into this crucial step in evolution (Amemiya et al., 2013). The lungfish genome, which is apparently far more complicated, has not as yet been deciphered.2

  The African lungfish, thought to be closer to the origin of four-legged animals than the coelacanth.

  Some supporters of Darwinian natural selection suggest that plants and animals are beautifully adapted to survive and reproduce in modern environments, but they are partly wrong. Neo-Darwinians, with the benefit of DNA and other genetic evidence, point out that modern organisms are actually adapted to survive in their ancestors’ environments, with which they co-evolved. The genes that survive, and are passed on through innumerable generations, add up, in effect, to a description of what it took to survive in the past (Dawkins, 2017).

  Rapid environmental changes wrought by humans therefore represent a severe threat even to the most exquisitely adapted organisms, and particularly to the most specialised ones, such as the coelacanth. Humans have brought about many changes to the environment of the coelacanth, including global warming, plastic and insecticide pollution, alterations to predator and prey populations, direct mortalities of coelacanths (although fishing pressure by traditional fishermen is thought to have had a negligible effect; Bruton & Stobbs, 1991), and the environmental impacts of blast fishing, poisoning and the destruction of coral reefs.

  Both the Indian Ocean and Indonesian coelacanths are listed as ‘critically endangered’ in the international Red List of Threatened Species, which implies that they will probably go extinct if the conditions that threaten them continue to prevail. Notwithstanding this assessment, modern coelacanths will likely outlive humans. The coelacanth has become, for many people, a symbol of hope and optimism. For marine conservationists, it is the representative of all marine animals that are threatened with extinction, the ‘panda of the seas’.

  Stainless steel sculpture by Uwe Pfaff of the coelacanth with the profile of a man inside, highlighting the interrelated destinies of coelacanths and men.

  The coelacanth is famous not only for its fascinating natural history but also because it has a rich cultural history in terms of its interactions with humans. Few fishes have intersected with human culture in as many ways as ‘old fourlegs’. Over 5,000 scientific and popular publications have been written on the coelacanth (Nulens et al., 2013) as well as innumerable press articles. The coelacanth has been celebrated in irreverent prose by Ogden Nash, in song by Charles Rand, through the visual arts by New Yorker cartoonist Robert Day, and cinematographically in Creature of the Black Lagoon, a Hollywood blockbuster based on the drama of the discovery of the second coelacanth (Bruton, 2017). The word ‘coelacanth’ even entered public parlance when ‘a prominent member of the British Parliament … in attacking an opponent, called him a “Coelacanth” on the grounds that from his long silence in that august assembly it was a surprise to find him still alive’ (Smith, 1956), and was used by Time magazine when it described Richard Nixon as a ‘Coelacanth of American anti-communism’.

  The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was lampooned in this cartoon for being a backboneless politician for his appeasement of the Nazis.

  In 1973, eight years after Winston Churchill’s death, George Lichtheim described him as follows: ‘In one of his aspects he is a political coelacanth, a prehistoric monster fished up from the depths of the past (thus he appears to British left-wingers, who are nonetheless secretly proud of him).’ In everyday language the word ‘coelacanth’ is used, a bit unfairly, to refer to people who are old-fashioned and struggling to survive or, more appropriately, to animals or people that have risen phoenix-like from oblivion (Fricke, 1997), or to those who have been left behind by modern advances.

  Pair of 40 Comorian franc coelacanth stamps signed by JLB Smith.

  T
here is no doubt that JLB Smith’s gift for publicising the coelacanth helped to raise its (and his) public profile and made it a familiar symbol around the world. Coelacanths have appeared on the postage stamps of at least 22 countries, including six where they are known to live (Comoros, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania) and 16 where they do not! Not surprisingly, the Comoros has issued the most coelacanth stamps (12 sets). In 1989 South Africa issued four postage stamps showing the coelacanth, JLB Smith and Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer examining the first specimen, the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology (now SAIAB), and the Jago submersible. Further examples of the cultural significance of the coelacanth are discussed by Fricke (1997) and Bruton (2017).

  Coelacanths have also appeared on money. The 1,000 CF (Comorian franc) banknote and 55 CF coin depict the coelacanth, as do a 10 euro coin issued by France, a 2 meticais coin from Mozambique and the 1,000 and 4,000 kwacha coins from Zambia. South Africa minted a 24-carat gold commemorative coin showing the coelacanth in 1998 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first capture and, in 2013, a 10-cent silver coin was issued to commemorate the establishment of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

  Coelacanths have also been the subject of cartoons highlighting the threats of nuclear bombs, air pollution or the impact of humans on the natural environment and, more happily, to celebrate the dramatic evolutionary step by amphibious vertebrates from water onto land or the evolution of biodiversity. The coelacanth has also been used in works of art, books, plays and crafts as a symbol of surprise, rarity, survival and primitiveness, or as a ‘living fossil’, ‘window into the past’ or ‘time machine’. The South African artist Hylton Mann used the coelacanth to symbolise our dependence on fossil fuels, like oil and coal. His artwork shows three businessmen staring at a coelacanth egg (the source of life) while a line of coelacanths spirals off into extinction over a barren landscape created by humans.

  Five Comorian franc coin depicting the coelacanth.

  The coelacanth enjoys such a high profile among the general public that it became the ‘full-time Public Relations Officer’ of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (Bruton, 1996; Gon, 2002). This author even presented a paper at a conference of the Southern African Museums Association entitled ‘The coelacanth is a mammal’, based not on its taxonomic relationships but on its ability to be milked!

  1The British biologist JBS Haldane (1964) was once challenged to name a single discovery that would falsify the theory of evolution. ‘Fossil rabbits in the Devonian’, he answered. So far not a single fossil has been found out of place in the evolutionary record, one of the many proofs of evolution.

  2The closest known fossil to a ‘missing link’ between an amphibian-like fish and a fish-like amphibian is an extraordinary creature called ‘tiktaalik’, discovered in the Canadian Arctic by Neil Shubin and Edward Daeschler, which has a crocodile-like head on a salamander’s trunk with a fish’s scales and tail (Shubin, 2007).

  CHAPTER 19

  After the coelacanth

  Consolidation and renewal

  BY 1953 the Smiths were able to return to their work on the other fishes of the Western Indian Ocean. By now JLB was 56 and Margaret 37 but they still had enough drive and energy to embark upon further fish-collecting expeditions. In 1953 a short collecting trip, which reaped rich rewards, was undertaken from Bazaruto Island southwards to Inhaca Island off Mozambique. This was followed in 1954 by a more ambitious expedition to Kenya (mainly Shimoni), Seychelles (including the outlying Denis and Bird islands), Amirantes (mainly D’Arros and Alfonse), Providence, St Pierre and Astove, and finally to the Aldabra Archipelago (Cosmoledo, Assumption and Aldabra). They were accompanied on this expedition by their son, William, now 15 years old; and, on the latter half of the expedition and in two vessels, by four South African game-fish anglers. The islands that they visited proved to be among the richest areas from which they had ever collected and a great deal of new material, mainly small species, was brought back to Grahamstown. However, lack of space and containers seriously limited their ability to preserve and transport larger specimens.

  In 1955 JLB accompanied some South African fisheries industrialists to Angola to study the fisheries potential there. They flew to Luanda and then followed the coast southwards to the town of Moçamedes in a light aircraft. JLB’s expert knowledge of fish and fishing, and his fluent Portuguese, were invaluable to the group but his lack of experience in fisheries science probably meant that he could make few contributions in this field. He subsequently published two popular articles on angling in Angola but nothing on the commercial fishing potential there.

  In 1956 the Smiths mounted their last expedition to East Africa, to Pinda in northern Mozambique. Here, calm seas and spectacular equinoctial tides greatly facilitated their collecting, and vast numbers of fish were collected and many photographs were taken. Despite the rigours of constant expeditionary work, JLB Smith, now 59 years old, published 14 scientific papers that year, including the first Ichthyological Bulletin of the Department of Ichthyology, on the parrotfishes of the Western Indian Ocean.

  During their fish-collecting expeditions in the 1940s and 1950s the Smiths formed many firm friendships with the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique. Among their friends they numbered, as Margaret wrote in 1969, ‘… two Governor-Generals, four Port Captains, Military, Naval and Merchant Navy personnel, administrative officials, journalists, scientists and private persons’. They also established cordial relations further afield, in Kenya, Tanzania and the Seychelles, which greatly facilitated their work. During these expeditions Margaret was the gifted ‘public relations officer’ whereas the laconic JLB gained favour with their hosts mainly by sharing his expertise on fishes, giving public talks in Portuguese (in Lourenço Marques and Beira), and showing the officials the fishes they had collected.

  During all these encounters with officialdom, no matter how formal the occasion, JLB Smith always wore his expedition khakis (usually shorts, but occasionally long flannels), leather sandals and a pith helmet. Margaret also adopted this dour plumage while on field trips with Smith, often wearing khaki shorts (tucked up so that they looked like bloomers) and men’s shirts (with large, practical pockets), leather sandals and a pith helmet.

  JLB Smith meeting senior Portuguese officials in Lourenço Marques in 1951 in his typical khaki shorts and pith helmet.

  The Smiths’ fish-collecting expeditions were mainly funded by the CSIR, but funding was also provided by private individuals, angling clubs and companies. The Portuguese authorities were particularly generous, especially in supporting expeditions to the remote, northern parts of their colony. These regions had hardly been explored before and, north of Angoche, remain relatively unexplored even today, except through satellite imagery. The authorities in Kenya, Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Aldabra and the Seychelles also supported their work; these multi-national collaborations were among the first forged by South African scientists in East Africa.

  Between expeditions, the day-to-day work of the new Department of Ichthyology at the Rhodes University College (RUC) continued. Journalist Audrey Ryan (1997) had vivid memories of the early days in the Department of Ichthyology as it was in 1953 when she applied for a position there:

  ‘With some trepidation I arrived to be confronted by a tough looking ten year old [William], scowling ferociously and chewing green peas! After that hurdle, the interview with a distracted and exhausted Prof Smith was relatively easy, and I was told to start immediately. The Department of Ichthyology was an old wooden building on the main campus with a small lawn outside – too small to accommodate all the pressmen milling around plus cameras set up to film the star of the show – a great ugly, strange looking fish in a trough filled with preservative of some sort. The building creaked, the offices were all partitioned and everywhere was the smell of formalin and fish. My meeting with Margaret was the start of a long friendship and my admiration for her at that time was tremendous. There were people from a
ll over the world to be greeted and charmed; an exhausted and often irritable husband to care for; and a small boy who also wanted her attention.

  ‘The pressure on the Smiths was enormous and at times poor William would get the worst of it as we heard the roar “Get that damned child out of here” and Margaret would remove his offending presence, until the next time. My work consisted of typing out all the articles and letters from throughout the world that were being clamoured for – never a dull moment to start with. … Margaret was kept busy protecting her husband from the curious, and charming the scientists and the press.’

  Pat Long (1997), who also worked in the Department of Ichthyology in the early 1950s as a scholar and student, remembers:

  ‘Another job I had was to file letters. This was interesting, as the correspondents were from all over the world. The letters that especially interested me were those from … the Emperor of Japan who was an amateur ichthyologist. The Professor (as we called him) was interested in all sorts of things not concerned with fish, and I remember one letter he wrote to the trainer/coach of the Springbok rugby team, advocating some method of play that he thought would improve their chances of success.

  ‘The deadliest job … was typing fish catalogue cards. Along the top I had to put the fish’s number. As far as I can remember, this consisted of four numbers: dorsal spines followed by dorsal rays and then anal spines followed by anal rays, e.g. 11 14 3 12. Then the Latin names, etc. It seemed to me that every species had a unique number, and I got quite good at predicting which species went with which number, especially the eels.