[4] Based on growth rings in the creatures' ear bones (otoliths), scientists infer that individual coelacanths may live as long as 80 to 100 years.

Coelacanths are opportunistic feeders, hunting cuttlefish, squid, snipe eels, small sharks, and other fish found in their deep reef and volcanic slope habitats.

Scientists suspect that one reason this fish has been so successful is that specimens are able to slow down their metabolisms at will, sinking into the less-inhabited depths and minimizing their nutritional requirements in a sort of hibernation mode.

[7][8] On December 23, 1938, Hendrik Goosen, the captain of the trawler Nerine, returned to the harbour at East London, South Africa, after a trawl between the Chalumna and Ncera Rivers.

As he frequently did, he telephoned his friend, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator at East London's small museum, to see if she wanted to look over the contents of the catch for anything interesting, and told her of the strange fish he has set aside for her.

Failing to find a description of the creature in any of her books, she attempted to contact her friend, Professor James Leonard Brierley Smith, but he was away for Christmas.

Smith distributed thousands of flyers with a photograph of the fish, description, and reward, but World War II interrupted the search.

The second specimen, found just before Christmas 1952[15] by Comoran fisherman Ahamadi Abdallah, was described as a different species, first as Malania hunti and later as Malania anjounae, after Daniel François Malan, the South African Prime Minister who had dispatched an SAAF Dakota at the behest of Professor Smith to fetch the specimen.

[15] The Comorans are now aware of the significance of the endangered species, and have established a program to return accidentally-caught coelacanth to deep water.

His book Sea Fishes of the Indian Ocean, illustrated and co-authored by his wife Margaret, remains the standard ichthyological reference for the region.

In 1988, marine biologist Hans Fricke was the first to photograph the species in its natural habitat, 180 metres (590 ft) off Grand Comoro's west coast.

[17] On September 18, 1997, Arnaz and Mark Erdmann, traveling in Indonesia on their honeymoon, saw a strange fish enter the market at Manado Tua, on the island of Sulawesi.

[19][20] Superficially, the Indonesian coelacanth, locally called raja laut (king of the sea), appears to be the same as those found in the Comoros, except the background coloration of the skin is brownish-gray rather than bluish.

[22] On May 19, 2007, Justinus Lahama, an Indonesian fisherman, caught a 1.3-metre-long, 50 kg/110 pound coelacanth off the coast near Manado, on northern Sulawesi Island near Bunaken National Marine Park.

On 28 October 2000, just south of the Mozambique border in Sodwana Bay in the St. Lucia Marine Protected Area, three deep-water divers, Pieter Venter, Peter Timm, and Etienne le Roux, made a dive to 104 metres and unexpectedly spotted a coelacanth.

On 27 November, after an unsuccessful initial dive the previous day, four members of the group, Pieter Venter, Gilbert Gunn, Christo Serfontein, and Dennis Harding, found three coelacanths.

Two coelacanths were initially reported captured off Songo Mnara, a small island off the edge of the Indian Ocean in August 2003.

Officials of the Tanga Coastal Zone Conservation and Development Programme, which has a long-term strategy for protecting the species, see a connection with the timing of the captures with trawling - especially by Japanese vessels - near the coelacanth's habitat, as within a couple of days of trawlers casting their nets, coelacanths have turned up in deep-water gill nets intended for sharks.

"[24] In a March 2008 report,[25] the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum, a local environmental nongovernmental organization, warned that a proposed port project at Mwambani Bay could threaten a coastal population of coelacanth.