On Touching a Coelacanth
By William Rowland
I wouldn't call it a hobby, this habit I have of wanting to touch things out of reach. Rather, it is a need I as a blind person have to know what things are really like.
It is a need that has put me in touch with ancient artefacts and barriered works of art; and live things too, such as the welwitschia and the cheetah.
But one of these mysteries remained elusive, that is, until recently I lunched with Grahamstown friend Pam Paton, longtime alderman and citizen of citizens in the town. Did she think it was possible? Would it be allowed? And who to speak to?
And so it was that I found myself at what I prefer to call the Ichthyological Institute - which has a longer and more technical name - with a coelacanth on the countertop in front of me. The fish had been removed from its propanol tank specially for my visit, while Prof Paul Skelton had prepared me for my encounter with all the information a curious mind could desire.
How actually to do this? One always feels a moment of reverence on these occasions, but then you simply get down to it...
Starting from my left - the pouted mouth, the little pool of the eye, the elongated curve of the scaly body, and the fan-shaped tail. And then, of course, the "fossil" fins with which the coelacanth walks or rows itself through the water.
One has to be attentive to detail when touching rare and precious specimens. Probably you will have one chance only. You cannot intrude like this at every whim.
And so you record in memory, indelibly, the shape and the feel, and the wonder of touching 400 million years of rescued evolution. I think of it as something approaching a sacred privilege.
Words that may be unfamiliar to some readers
Coelacanth: a large bony marine fish with a three-lobed tail fin and fleshy pectoral fins known only from fossils until one was found alive off the South African coast in 1938.
Welwitschia: an unusual gymnosperm plant, the welwitschia mirabilis is confined to the desert of Namibia. The very short stem bears two strap-shaped waxy leaves up to one metre long. Individual plants may live for more than a hundred years.
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