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before it penetrated my mind that this was a hoax. I made no 

 comment, I was not even angry, it was such a terrific relief, and 

 I went inside, put my sleeping-bag on the icy floor near the box 

 and tried to rest. My eyes would stray to that box. They would 

 not have got me to turn back. This was my Coelacanth. I lay there, 

 going over in my mind again all I had learnt, especially what Hunt 

 had told me, and how it fitted into the background of my life 

 and work all those long years in these parts. It is an amazing 

 story. 



In the western Indian Ocean, which embraces the East African 

 coast, Madagascar, and other lesser islands, it is normal to find 

 deep water close to land. There are only a few places where the 

 bottom shelves gently from the shore, in most parts great cliffs 

 beneath the sea plunge abruptly to the depths, and here the clear 

 and lovely green or blue of the water changes to an ominous 

 black. An echo-sounder chart from such parts is most interesting, 

 for it shows the profile of the bottom of the ocean in miniature. 



The coastal natives over most of that area have almost every- 

 where a seafaring and fishing tradition, often derived from the 

 Arabs, whose southerly penetration in exploratory voyages com- 

 menced so long ago that its origin is lost in the remote past. Line- 

 fishing of different kinds is common to them all, and partly because 

 the water is too clear for fishing to be successful where it is shallow, 

 in many parts they fish where the water is relatively deep, from 

 50 to 100 fathoms. With proper tackle and ample fish, the many 

 problems of deep-line fishing can be overcome to make this a 

 commercial possibility, but when you see the clumsy tackle used 

 by most East African natives for this purpose you wonder how it 

 pays ; and it continues only because their economic level is so low, 

 their catch per man per unit of time could never be competitive 

 in any efficient civilised community in temperate climates. Those 

 who fish in this way generally use a lump of coral the size of a 

 man's head as a sinker. In some parts they go out with dozens of 

 such lumps, and have a special knot so that when the sinker 

 reaches the bottom or the desired depth a quick jerk shakes it 

 loose from the line, which method at least saves hauling this extra 

 weight several hundred feet to the top. Others find it less trouble 

 to prepare only a few such sinkers, and use them all the time, haul- 

 ing one laboriously all that way to the surface each time they need 



