THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

With Miguel now gone to Cape Verde and a more recent big six gill attempt at Ascension dogged by
big oil fish attacking, and in some cases taking the baits, the likelihood of that one remaining tick
required to complete my bucket list has now gone. For anyone else out there wanting the same, the
flight to Ascension out of RAF Brize Norton is probably the best remaining option now.
Associated audio interview numbers: 13, 14 and 123.
FOOTNOTE: There was also a time when, having studied the amazing story behind a fish known as
the coelacanth, and the fact that during the early part of the twentieth century the species had suddenly
re-appeared in the flesh having supposedly been extinct for sixty five million years, I considered adding
that to the list as the final ultimate angling challenge.
This fish which belongs to a group known as the lobe fins, one of which sharing a common ancestor
with the Coelocanth, some three hundred and seventy to three hundred and ninety million years ago,
left the water on an evolutionary journey that would lead all the way through to ourselves.
That was Tiktaalik, predicted in terms of anatomical characteristics, timing, and location by Prof. Neil
Shubin, who later led an expedition to look for its fossilized remains and eventually found them in arctic
Canada. A fish that had extended the development of the extraordinary fins found in the Coelocanth to
the point where it could crawl out of the water and support itself, either to feed on invertebrates that had
already made the same transition, or to avoid predation.
Like the people who re-discovered the Coelocanth to be extant by catching them on baited long-lines
back in the late 1930's, I quite fancied catching one myself on rod and line. But those first specimens
unfortunately came from the Comoros Islands just to the north of Madagascar. A politically unstable,
often feuding island group accessible only from Yemen, which in today's religious and political climate
would not be at the top of my must visit list, for which reason I quite naturally thought better of it.
More recently however, coelacanth have started turning up in other parts of the world. Northern
Sulawesi in Indonesia for example, and Sodwana Bay in South Africa close to the Mozambique border,
where some amazing documentary video has been shot in water shallow enough for divers to go down.
Ironically, I fished Sodwana Bay before their discovery there. Had I known of their presence at that
time around a series of deep water caves just a few miles offshore, I might have been tempted to give
that a go instead of chasing marlin and kingfish. But I didn't. And judging by the levels of international
protection given to the species and the outcry that might have provoked had I succeeded, I think it's
probably as well.
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