Recollections of the Past 30 years pursuing Coelacanths
Jerome Hamlin, creator dinofish.com
My new fax machine changed my communication pattern with the Comoros. There would be no more telexes, but still sometimes, letters. One fax in the winter of '90 was quite startling. A group of gem merchants were visiting the Comoros, dealing with the government at the highest levels. They faxed me with the information that the government of the Comoros was offering a million dollar contract for any further researches on coelacanths in the vicinity of the islands, and that all others not part of the agreement would be excluded. While this would not have a huge effect on my minimal operations, I though I should advise the members of the C.C.C. That led to some back and forth, the first, between myself and Dr. Fricke of the German submarine group. He was alarmed for good reason, and promised a publicity campaign against the contract plan. In the end the contract scheme came to naught, but for reasons I'm not clear about.
Then a letter arrived from the the U.S. Consulate, Moroni, Grand Comoro. A state department inspection of the consulate warehouse had taken place, and all non state department items had to be removed. That meant our large insulated transporter and all the associated life support gear. I had to come up with a new plan.
The transporter (and life support gear) in its hut at the C.N.D.R.S., the science and cultural museum in Moroni.
I got permission to move the gear to the science museum in Moroni, the C.N.D.R.S., where we had set up a small aquarium the year before, then I flew to the Comoros over Thanksgiving 1990. The transfer went smoothly, and the tank was again filled with sea water in hopes of being used for an intercept triage. We did not think that coelacanths would recover if simply released by the fishermen, because of the stress they had gone through fighting the catch. But if they could recover in a cool down tank, then there were other possibilities.While in the Comoros, I was invited to a consular Thanksgiving dinner. There was now a full ambassador. At the dinner, the Peace Corp Director for the Comoros said to me, "The Japanese didn't catch one." "I'm thinking, "No shit, Sherlock!"
For the next few years I busied myself setting up and running a small video editing facility in NYC. Submersible dives continued in the Comoros with the German team counting the population (the individual fish could be distinguished by their markings) in the submarine caves. They had also managed to attach a sonar transducer to a coelacanth and learned that they range up and down the coast at night, leaving the caves like clockwork in the afternoon. Coelacanths also swam to greater depths than had been expected. Then in 1994, something happened that would lead to the birth of dinofish.com.
