IS6 



being said that the oil is strongly purgative and even poisonous, 

 and there are many records of ill-effects and even deaths following 

 the consumption of its flesh. In other parts, however, as apparently 

 in the Comores, it is a valued food fish and commonly eaten with- 

 out harm. It is interesting to note that this fish is oily, for so is 

 the Coelacanth, very oily. 



By late December 1952, the leaflets that Hunt had taken in the 

 previous October had, by orders of the Governor, been distrib- 

 uted to all the islands and by special runners about them, so that 

 the more intelligent natives at least were aware, even if they could 

 not believe, that the enormous sum of 50,000 Colonial francs 

 would be paid for one special fish. 



According to what has been told, some at least of the European 

 officials read the leaflet with scepticism if not with amusement, 

 and I was told that though a visiting scientific officer from 

 Madagascar was shown the leaflets Hunt had brought (he may have 

 seen them before on Madagascar), he attached so little importance 

 to them that he apparently did not indicate anything special to 

 the local authorities nor did he mention the matter on his return. 



On the night of the 20th December a native, one Ahmed Hus- 

 sein, of Domoni, a small village on the south-east coast of An- 

 jouan, with another fisherman, went out in his canoe to fish. 

 First they went to his palm-leaf-strip traps, close to the shore, 

 from which they took small reef fishes that are used for bait. 

 Then they went somewhat farther out, and let out their long lines. 

 Hunt had heard that the depth was about 20 fathoms.* 



In the night Hussein hooked a large fish, which he eventually 

 subdued at the canoe by battering its head, a merciful way of 

 killing a fish, but scientifically a shocking tragedy. Nobody seems 

 to know if he caught anything else, but from what I gathered of 

 the Comorans, one such large fish would have been more than 

 enough to satisfy any of them, so they went back to shore and to bed. 



• The French later gave this depth as considerably more ; indeed, stating that 

 they had been able to find the exact spot and take soundings, and they quoted 

 the depth to a metre. This indicates work of unusual precision, for it would 

 depend on the memory of a native to find the exact spot where he was when he 

 hooked the Coelacanth, on a dark night in a drifting canoe without any anchor. 

 With the bottom sloping as steeply as in this area, even a few yards out would 

 make a considerable difference to the depth. However, a few fathoms more or 

 less are not important. What is important is that where the Coelacanth was 

 hooked was emphatically not any 'inaccessible depth' of the sea. 



