Misconceptions and Controversies

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    The big misconception about the fish was obviously the fact that people thought it went extinct about 70 million years ago. The controversy today is about whether or not the fish should be studied more or should it be left alone.
    Scientists and curators have been trying for years to capture a live coelacanth and keep it alive in captivity, but it has not been done. This is because they asphixiate as soon as they are brought to the surface (Coad, 1998). Everytime they try and fail a coelacanth dies so their numbers are now declining because of this (Knapp, 1998). There are 125 Coelacanth species in the fossil record, but there is only one living (Bartlett, 1997). From 1984 to 1994, the Coelacanth numbers have dropped by 30%, because of scientist hunting them, and local fisherman hooking them on their lines (Bartlett, 1997). These fisherman hunt for oilfish, which live in the same area as the Coelacanth, so they are commonly caught along with oilfish (Coad, 1998). Then they are thrown overboard since they are inedible (Hamlin, 1999).