The coelacanth fish has been around for about 400 million years, give a year or two, and if a South African internet company, Africam.com, gets its way, the fish could be viewed live by millions of people around the world.
The fish has been dubbed the dinosaur of the deep due to its prehistoric looks and was discovered off the KwaZulu-Natal coast two weeks ago. Until the discovery of a dead coelacanth in the net of a fishing trawler off East London, South Africa, in 1939 it was thought to be extinct.
Then more recently two scuba divers took video footage of six of the creatures, each about 1 1/2 metres long, in the deep waters around Sodwana Bay. One of the divers died during filming and the other got into serious difficulties and had to be rescued.
Dr Phil Heemstra, a coelacanth expert, has identified the fish. They are thought to be one of the prehistoric fish, the crossopterygians, with limb-like fins, that were the forerunners of the first tetrapods, or four-legged, land-dwelling vertebrates.
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