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Start discussion here for A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth by Samantha Weinberg.

About the Book
Just before Christmas in 1938, the young woman curator of a small South African museum spotted a strange-looking fish on a trawler's deck. It was five feet long, with steel-blue scales, luminescent eyes and remarkable limb-like fins, unlike those of any fish she had ever seen. Determined to preserve her unusual find, she searched for days for a way to save it, but ended up with only the skin and a few bones.

A charismatic amateur ichthyologist, J.L.B. Smith, saw a thumbnail sketch of the fish and was thunderstruck. He recognized it as a coelacanth (pronounced see-la-kanth), a creature known from fossils dating back 400 million years and thought to have died out with the dinosaurs. With its extraordinary limbs, the coelacanth was believed to be the first fish to crawl from the sea and evolve into reptiles, mammals and eventually mankind. The discovery was immediately dubbed the "greatest scientific find of the century."

Smith devoted his life to the search for a complete specimen, a
fourteen-year odyssey that culminated in a dramatic act of international piracy. As the fame of the coelacanth spread, so did rumors and obsessions. Nations fought over it, multimillion-dollar expeditions were launched, and submarines hand-built to find it. In 1998, the rumors and the truth came together in a gripping climax, which brought the coelacanth back into the international limelight.

A Fish Caught in Time is the entrancing story of the most rare and precious fish in the world--our own great uncle forty million times removed.

About the Author
Samantha Weinberg is a British journalist of South African descent.

I read this book last year as part of the TBR challenge here and I was absolutely enthralled. I loved the science and the personal stories. This is a hidden gem for sure.

I finished this last night. I found much of the book fascinating and for a book which does not sound like the most scintillating topic, it kept my interest. Once the 2nd coelacanth was caught, I got a little tired of the search for a coelacanth that would live.

I was also appalled how many fish were caught initially for research and then for display at museums. I thought the rare fish should be protected since no one had any idea how many there were. J.B.L. Smith, who identified the first coelacanth, finally warned after a few years that the world should stop killing the fish for just that reason. He was ignored and almost 30 years later, there was finally an agreement by most countries to conserve this rare fish. It really is rare and, at the time the book was written, no coelacanth had ever survived being caught even when it was treated with care.

I was hoping for more information about Comoros since this was my ATW book for that country. A short history and a small section about native fishermen and the lack of opportunity for other professions was pretty much all there was. This is a book about a fish and not the country whose waters it inhabits, which is fair but still disappointed me a bit.

I have never hear of this and am intrigued. Going to see if my library has a copy.

I was excited to read this book after seeing sssnoo reading it last year. I was not too surprised how much I enjoyed the book because I do like reading about fish for some reason. It was interesting seeing the history and almost reads like a novel rather than a science book that is all facts and figures.

Rachel wrote: "I was excited to read this book after seeing sssnoo reading it last year. I was not too surprised how much I enjoyed the book because I do like reading about fish for some reason. It was interestin..." I am honored my review enticed you to read this book. To me it was a gem I never would have discovered or read if not for this book group.