Coelacanth
Let’s get the 6-foot, 200-pound fish out of the way. The coelacanth looks like a grouper got a paint job from the night sky; it’s a bulky, midnight-blue fish with a speckling of iridescent scales. It was previously identified from fossils and thought to have gone extinct some 75,000,000 years ago, so when one of the fish was trawled off the coast of South Africa in 1938, it was a bit of a shock. It wasn’t until 1952 that another, more well-preserved specimen came out of the shallow waters off Comoros that the animal’s identity (and survival) were confirmed by ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith, who relied on local Comorans Ahamadi Abdallah and Affane Mohamed, who found a new specimen and suggested calling the tip in. “When he saw the fish,” the New York Times reportedat the time, “Professor Smith knelt on the deck and wept.”
This hefty fish is even featured in Animal Crossing and inspired a species of Pokémon. The actual species remained rare, and threatened, so you can imagine the amazement of National Geographic divers when they saw one in the flesh back in 2012.
