The Coelacanth a dive into our origins

Gombessa Expedition 1 To dive for the Coelacanth is to go back in time In 1938 when it was known only as a fossil a Coelacanth was discovered in South Africa in a fishermans net This species bears witness to an evolutionary bifurcation 380 million years ago and bears the marks of a great event the day the fish left the ocean for the open air Does it hold the secret to the transition to walking on land In 2010 a marine biologist and outstanding diver Laurent Ballesta took the first photographs of the Coelacanth in its ecosystem In April 2013 divers and researchers set down their equipment at the Sodwana base camp in South Africa in the club founded by Peter Timm who died in 2014 Six weeks of extreme diving at depths of over 120 meters in an attempt to film the Coelacanth with a doubleheaded camera collect its DNA and tag a subject with a satellitelinked beacon