A Japanese research team succeeded in photographing a coelacanth, a fish called "living fossil", with a fixed camera installed on the seabed, and it is valuable to record the usual ecology such as the characteristic large dorsal fin folded. It is attracting attention as a lively image.
"Coelacanth" is called a living fossil because it looks almost the same as a fossil of a fish about 400 million years ago, and it has been confirmed to inhabit the waters near Africa and Indonesia, but mainly in the water depth. Since it lives in a relatively deep sea of 100 meters or more and the number of individuals is small, little is known about its detailed ecology.
In 2018, a research team of Japanese researchers installed a fixed camera on the seabed at a depth of about 100 meters on the coast of South Africa and continued recording for 6 days, and succeeded in shooting the coelacanth for about 30 minutes. ..
In the video, the large dorsal fin, which has been a feature of coelacanth, is folded, and it is confirmed that the shark stands to open the dorsal fin when approaching and alerting, and the research team folded the dorsal fin when the coelacanth was stress-free. It turns out that there is.
It also means that the coelacanth, which was previously thought to be nocturnal, was found to be active during the day.
Dr. Jiro Sakagami, who is a member of the research team and is conducting research on fish, said, "Coelacanth is a valuable image because it has always been thought that it has a large dorsal fin. By using this method, the original behavior of coelacanth I would like to continue to clarify the ecology and ecology. "