St. Lucia Marine Protected Area, South Africa
In South Africa, the search continued on and off over the years. One diver, 46-year-old, Riaan Bouwer, lost his life exploring for coelacanths in June 1998. On October 28th, 2000, just south of the Mozambique border, in Sodwana Bay in the St. Lucia Marine Protected Area, three pleasure divers - Pieter Venter, Peter Timm and Etienne le Roux - made a dive to 104 metres and suddenly spotted a coelacanth. Without cameras, the group decided to return.

Calling themselves SA Coelacanth Expedition 2000 the group, with several additional members, returned and on November 26, they performed a first dive without seeing coelacanths. The next day Pieter Venter, Gilbert Gunn, Christo Serfontein and Dennis Harding, went down again. Moving from cavern to cavern, they found three coelacanths. The largest was between 1.5 and 1.8 metres long, the other two 1.2 metres and 1 metre. The fish swam heads down and appeared to be feeding off of ledges. The cameramen took video footage and photos. Then disaster struck. Assisting Christo, who suddenly passed out under water, 34-year-old Dennis Harding rose to the surface with him in an uncontrolled ascent. Harding complained of neck pains and died in the boat. Apparently, he had suffered a cerebral embolism. Christo recovered after being taken underwater for recompression.

However, the find was big news in South Africa. In March-April 2002, the Jago Submersible and Fricke Dive Team descended into the depths off Sodwana and observed 15 coelacanths, one pregnant. Tissue samples were taken using a dart probe.

Sponsorship

Our special thanks ansd appreciation for support, media,equipment, Web pages, advertising and funds from our sponsors. Without which our quest to find the Coelecanth would be fruitless.

We require a broadcast quality underwater video recorder.

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