Samantha WeinbergRecensioni

An unusual fish known from the fossil record and believed to go extinct 70+ million years ago was found by an amateur icthyologist in a 1930s fish market, leading to an all-out manhunt for a live coelacanth. This is the story of the fish’s heroes and a little about its villains (those who “discovered” its mythical medical properties leading to attempts to poach it like ivory). An excellent history if a bit dated.

The story of this fish is just amazing. The coelacanth, closest fish relative to tetrapods (ancestors of all reptiles, amphibians and mammals) was thought to be extinct for over three hundred million years until one day in 1938 when a fisherman in southern Africa offered part of his catch to a local museum curator- including a large and very strange fish. She was unable to properly preserve the specimen, so soon hoped to find another- it didn't happen for thirty years- but then when rewards were offered, fisherman began pulling coelacanths out of the sea rather regularly (considering how long they'd been so hidden). This narrative describes the scramble of scientists and museums to get their hands on coelacanth specimens, and the struggles to procure a live one- even though the fish has an oil-filled organ in lieu of a swim bladder (so it doesn't suffer from decompression when brought up from the great depths where it lives) yet all the coelacanths caught and brought to the surface soon died from the stress and other factors. It was rather stunning to read the description of the first person who built a submersible and was able to dive deep enough to view the coelacanths in their habitat- and find out where they were actually living. There are two known extant populations- one off the Comoros Islands near Madagascar and the other off the coast of Indonesia. (They have different colors- the African coelacanth is dark blue with white markings, and the Indonesian one is brown speckled with gold). When the ancient fish was first discovered the scramble was to procure specimens for study, but then people realized it had a low reproduction rate - giving live birth in small numbers compared to oviparous fishes- and they switched tactics to make fisherman release any coelacanth caught instead of rewarding them for bringing them in. I looked it up and there are still the only the two known populations so it's very rare. Makes you wonder what else is out there, lurking in caves under the ocean, that we don't know about!

The book is pretty engaging, but was a lot about the people involved in the discovery, including political squabbles over who had rights to the first coelacanth specimens- rather than details about the fish itself. I would really like to read some of the firsthand accounts or more about the physiology of the living coelacanth, but this was a really good introduction to the species and its wonders.

from the Dogear Diary

Apart from sharks, I had never thought of any fish as “charismatic” but what else would you call a five-foot long fish with steel-blue scales, luminescent green eyes, and limb-like fins that frequently does headstands when submersibles approach?

Coelacanths (seel-a-kanths) swam in Panthalassa and watched the dinosaurs rise and fall. In fact, their fossil record goes back 400 million years. However, they vanished from the fossil record around the same time the dinosaurs did and were presumed extinct. That belief didn’t change until 1938, when Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, the curator of a small museum in South Africa, found a coelacanth in the haul of a fishing boat. She made heroic efforts to preserve it, and it became the type specimen for the species, which was named in her honor (Latimeria chulumnae). But a second specimen was desperately needed, not least because it had not been possible to preserve the internal organs of the first fish. The race to find more coelacanths was on, and this book details the search for more coelacanths and describes many of their unique biological features. There are two extant species, one that lives off the coast of eastern Africa and one that lives in Indonesia, and it is thought there may be a third species living off the coast of Central America.

One of the things about the book that I especially liked was that it included so many first-hand descriptions of peoples’ first impressions of the coelacanths they saw (all in layman’s terms), because they helped give insight into why the fish fired so many peoples’ imaginations, to the extent they were willing to travel to remote, exotic places and build their own submersibles to see it. And to write books dedicated to it. I loved that the author included her own first impression when she viewed a museum specimen for the first time, “It was unlike any fish I had seen before – its body was covered in scaly armor and its fins were attached by fat limb-like protuberances. It had large, yellowy green eyes, and a surprisingly gentle expression on its prehistoric face.”

More descriptions helped suck me in. Marjorie Courtney-Latimer’s first impression was also included, “[it was] the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was five feet long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-gray sheen all over…it was such a beautiful fish – more like a big china ornament.” A description from a scientist in Indonesia effectively captured the magic of encountering a living one in the wild, “It was magnificent, each scale appeared to be flecked in gold. I touched it and it was very soft: I could put my arms around it and squeeze, and it was more like holding a baby with soft, young flesh, than a big, hard fish. The thing that captivated me most was its eyes. They were large and in certain lights were a luminescent, almost alien green, and they kept looking at me.”

Including the descriptions was very effective and made me want to see one for myself. The author seemed to anticipate this reaction, as she helpfully included an appendix with a worldwide list of museums with coelacanth specimens. More technical details on the coelacanth’s anatomy and DNA were consolidated and placed in a second appendix so the curious could learn more without the flow of the narrative being unnecessarily interrupted. As a biologist, this section appealed to me, but you can get a very good introduction to the coelacanth even without reading it. There is also a “Selected Reading” section, which provides citations to all the scientific papers detailing research on the coelacanth (including the original papers in Nature describing the “new” species).

I first found out about this book while I was reading Richard Fortey’s [b:Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|12627411|Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|Richard Fortey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333576387s/12627411.jpg|17681671] and became especially curious when Fortey said coelacanths could be considered living fossils as well, but that as a matter of principle he would not discuss species he could not personally encounter when they were alive. I’m glad he at least mentioned them and gave pointers as to where more information could be found.

Apart from sharks, I had never thought of any fish as “charismatic” but what else would you call a five-foot long fish with steel-blue scales, luminescent green eyes, and limb-like fins that frequently does headstands when submersibles approach?

Coelacanths (seel-a-kanths) swam in Panthalassa and watched the dinosaurs rise and fall. In fact, their fossil record goes back 400 million years. However, they vanished from the fossil record around the same time the dinosaurs did and were presumed extinct. That belief didn’t change until 1938, when Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, the curator of a small museum in South Africa, found a coelacanth in the haul of a fishing boat. She made heroic efforts to preserve it, and it became the type specimen for the species, which was named in her honor (Latimeria chulumnae). But a second specimen was desperately needed, not least because it had not been possible to preserve the internal organs of the first fish. The race to find more coelacanths was on, and this book details the search for more coelacanths and describes many of their unique biological features. There are two extant species, one that lives off the coast of eastern Africa and one that lives in Indonesia, and it is thought there may be a third species living off the coast of Central America.

One of the things about the book that I especially liked was that it included so many first-hand descriptions of peoples’ first impressions of the coelacanths they saw (all in layman’s terms), because they helped give insight into why the fish fired so many peoples’ imaginations, to the extent they were willing to travel to remote, exotic places and build their own submersibles to see it. And to write books dedicated to it. I loved that the author included her own first impression when she viewed a museum specimen for the first time, “It was unlike any fish I had seen before – its body was covered in scaly armor and its fins were attached by fat limb-like protuberances. It had large, yellowy green eyes, and a surprisingly gentle expression on its prehistoric face.”

More descriptions helped suck me in. Marjorie Courtney-Latimer’s first impression was also included, “[it was] the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was five feet long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-gray sheen all over…it was such a beautiful fish – more like a big china ornament.” A description from a scientist in Indonesia effectively captured the magic of encountering a living one in the wild, “It was magnificent, each scale appeared to be flecked in gold. I touched it and it was very soft: I could put my arms around it and squeeze, and it was more like holding a baby with soft, young flesh, than a big, hard fish. The thing that captivated me most was its eyes. They were large and in certain lights were a luminescent, almost alien green, and they kept looking at me.”

Including the descriptions was very effective and made me want to see one for myself. The author seemed to anticipate this reaction, as she helpfully included an appendix with a worldwide list of museums with coelacanth specimens. More technical details on the coelacanth’s anatomy and DNA were consolidated and placed in a second appendix so the curious could learn more without the flow of the narrative being unnecessarily interrupted. As a biologist, this section appealed to me, but you can get a very good introduction to the coelacanth even without reading it. There is also a “Selected Reading” section, which provides citations to all the scientific papers detailing research on the coelacanth (including the original papers in Nature describing the “new” species).

I first found out about this book while I was reading Richard Fortey’s [b:Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|12627411|Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind|Richard Fortey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333576387s/12627411.jpg|17681671] and became especially curious when Fortey said coelacanths could be considered living fossils as well, but that as a matter of principle he would not discuss species he could not personally encounter when they were alive. I’m glad he at least mentioned them and gave pointers as to where more information could be found.

A Fish Caught in Time is sort of a social history of the coelacanth. Author Samantha Weinburg is not a paleontologist or ichthyologist, so there’s not too much about coelacanth morphology or taxonomy or biology or ecology; instead we get biographies of the people involved in the coelacanth story:


Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, the self-taught curator at the small all-purpose (natural history, local history, assorted junk) museum in East London, South Africa. Ms. Courtenay-Latimer had befriended a local fishing boat captain who brought her anything interesting he trawled up. One day in 1938 that was a six-foot fish with unusual fins and scales. Once, when Ms. C-L was caught daydreaming in school during a lecture on paleontology, the teacher made her write “a ganoid fish is a fossil fish” twenty-five times; thus, she knew a ganoid scale when she saw one. Alas, she couldn’t find anybody local who knew anything about it, her calls and letters to the local universities went temporarily unanswered, and there wasn’t enough formalin in East London to preserve her catch, and it was starting to go bad – so she took it to the local taxidermist.


J.L.B. Smith, a chemistry professor and amateur ichthyologist at Rhodes University, who was the recipient of one of Latimer’s letters – which included a drawing. The drawing kindled a faint memory of something he’d once seen in a textbook. He couldn’t believe his own memory and kept having doubts, but he wired Latimer and told her to keep the fish until he could get to it. It took him months to finish his exam grading and arrange a temporary leave, but he and Mrs. Smith eventually turned up at the little East London Museum – and there on the examining table was a coelacanth. Smith went on to publish an exhaustive description in Nature, naming the fish Latimeria chalumnae. The he went looking for another one – which didn’t turn up until 1952, and in the Comoros, caught by a native fisherman and identified by a local trader who recognized it from Smith’s reward posters and wired him. In a display of determination mixed with chutzpah, Smith called up the Prime Minister of South Africa and asked to borrow an air force plane to fly to the Comoros. The Prime Minister was a fundamentalist – it was illegal to teach evolution in South Africa until the 1990s – but had happened to bring one of Smith’s books on ocean fish with him for light reading at his vacation home. He called up the minister of defense and Smith was quickly on his way to the Comoros in a Dakota.


The Comoros were French territory, but the local officials apparently didn’t quite get the importance of the second coelacanth, and allowed Smith to load it up and fly away with it. The aircrew were practical jokers and announced that a squadron of French fighters had been scrambled to intercept them and force them back. Smith said he’d go down with the plane rather than give up his coelacanth.


The French were still pretty annoyed, and kept the Comoros off limits to all foreign ichthyologists. More coelacanths turned up, and finally the ban was lifted. When the Comoros became independent in the 1970s, the coelacanth was pictured on the countries stamps and currency, and (despite being listed as an endangered species) coelancanths were caught and sold to anyone who could pay for them.


Hans Fricke, an East German escapee with a mechanical bent, became fascinated by coelacanths and built his own submarine to go looking for them, resulting in a lot of information about the creature’s life habits. During the day, they rest in caves in small groups; at night they hunt with ultra-sensitive eyes and a curious electro-sensitive organ in their snouts. Videos show coelacanths moving like no other fish – their paddling fins allow them to swim in any position, and they are just as likely to be moving upside down or standing on their heads as in a more fishlike fashion.


A second species of coelacanth was found in a fish market in Indonesia by a pair of honeymooning marine biologists in 1997, and more were found offshore. There are now about 200-300 specimens in museums around the world (no aquarium has a live one, but the Japanese keep trying). Coelacanth oil has become part of Chinese medicine, apparently going for $1000 or more for a cubic centimeter. It’s supposed to give long life. (Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer died in 2004 at 97).


One more tantalizing item: two silver coelacanth models have turned up in Spain; experts say they are apparently Mesoamerican. There thus may be another population of our distant relatives lurking in the Caribbean somewhere.


Entertaining and a quick read, even if not technical – the bibliography references the detailed treatises. All the people referenced are quirky and interesting, and the chain of coincidences that resulted in the first few coelacanths are intriguing.½

An interesting book about the discovery of the coelacanth and the people involved in studying it.½

Ah, the coelacanth. Who could possibly not love this living fossil? So old and ugly, just like me. Although people don't tend to refer to me as "The Missing Link" (I'm still at the amoeba stage).

I grew up hearing about this wonderful fish, which had defied the scientific beliefs of generations of wise men and women to turn up, looking rather healthy for its age. "A Fish Caught in Time" covers the rediscovery of the coelacanth and then the hunt for more as this fish, which had quietly bid its time in the oceans of the world for tens of millions of years, suddenly became the most famous animal since Rin Tin Tin.

Weinberg tells a good story and makes what is basically a book on fishing, a pastime I find extremely tedious, a page turner. And, I began to consider the Comoros islands as my next tourist destination.

May I look as good as the coelacanth when I'm in my 50 millions.

If you want a chuckle and a nostalgic trip to your teenage past when James Bond was your hero, then this is the book for you.

Moneypenny, of course, was M's Personal Secretary in the James Bond novels. Here we have the first of three novels where Jane Moneypenny tells her side of the Bond adventures. It's hilarious and wonderfully done. There are so many footnotes and historical notes the reader can end up thinking it's all true. The diaries have come to Moneypenny's niece who is editing them for us.

It's a fun read and I shall look for the others.

I can not write an unbiased review, because I am so taken with the idea of the coelacanth..

To quote the last sentence of the book... "a schoolchild, in response to the question posed in a German magazine article, 'Why is it worthwhile living this week?' replied that 'coelacanth still exist.'

I heartily agree.

Old Four Legs. While that may sound like someone leaving a pub run, it's really the affectionate name given to the Coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct until its mind-altering appearance in 1938. Since then, more have surfaced with their electrifying blue color and prehistoric everything else. They were supposed to be extinct! How amazing. Like Jurassic Park underwater.

I first became fascinated with this living fossil thanks to a National Geographic issue dedicated to this strange being. This book continues that accessibility by not being very scientific and teaching the reader as much about the trade of the fishermen in the Comoros, as about the fish itself. What else is lurking down there? Captain Nemo? The Loch Ness Monster?

I believe.

Book Season = Summer (blue fish and green mojitos)

Comoros. [Placeholder]

Weinberg describes the discovery of the coelacanth (or perhaps the "discovery," since the fishing communities knew it was there even if scientists didn't). The story is engagingly told and contributes to the reader's understanding of the historical and political context of the fish as well as its natural history. An easy and interesting book. Some reviewers have noted some inaccuracies; I can't speak to this, so caveat emptor.

This was a fascinating book for those interested in history, and with an open mind regarding the scientific world. Luckily, I possess both of those traits.

I've tried recommending this book to several other people who didn't look too excited about it. Nonetheless, I absolutely adored this book.

The story is true. The book was written to highlight the history of the coelacanth, an ancient fish thought to be extinct but recently rediscovered in the waters off of Southern and Eastern Africa.

The tale was quite amazing. This poor fish had existed for 65 million years undisturbed, rarely being caught, until someone happened to recognize it. While this discovery was amazing for science, it was terrible for the fish. They went from being caught occasionally, swimming beneath the radar, to being hunted within an inch of their lives. Luckily, new populations of the coelacanth are being discovered, so their existence may not be as endangered as we were previously concerned.

The discovery of this fish is particularly important because of their potential link to evolution. They could be the intermediary step between fish and lizard's crawling on the ground. This would, of course, be an important piece of the puzzle regarding the evolution of man. While this part of the story was also interesting to me, it was the obsession of Professor Smith in his striving to find this fish, just one more fish, so he could understand something which had so thoroughly captured his imagination and his heart which had me captivated.

This could be written about a different thought-to-be-extinct animal, but there is something quite exciting about the discovery of a fish which swam before the dinosaurs, and continued to swim long past them. The coelacanth shows us that adaptation if possible, and that some things can last. I absolutely suggest you read this book, with an open mind and heart.

An interesting story which details the personal efforts of those involved in the search for early specimens of the coelacanth. It does not give any satisfactory reason for the dilatory attitude of J.L.B. Smith who took several weeks to respond to Courtney-Latimer's request that he come to look at her specimen. Despite the time of year (Christmas) and the distance involved one is left feeling that had it been someone of greater stature than a young museum curator then he would have been on his way much sooner. That contentious issue aside, the book is a good read for the layman on one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th century.

If you are standing on your head in an ocean about 200 meters down and using weak electric signals in your puppy dog-like caudal fin and limb-like pectoral fins to detect prey, chances are you may be a coelacanth. If you are interested in reading something about a fish that does that sort of thing, you may be looking for this book.

A Fish Caught in Time describes the discovery, search for, natural history (as much as we know) of, and the scientists and fishermen obsessed with this ancient fish that was thought to be an extinct 'missing link' between life in the oceans and life on land. Samantha Weinberg, the author, readily captures the excitement of the initial discovery in southern Africa that the fish was not extinct, and the recent discovery of another population in Indonesia, as well as the efforts to understand and capture a live fish and/or images of one during the time in between. The author makes it completely understandable why scientists, fishermen, and others become so enthralled they would travel halfway around the world to attempt to get a glimpse of this ungainly but beautiful and important fish.

But if you just want to stay in your armchair (or wherever) to get the picture, read this book.

A wonderfully informative book about the coelacanth from it's modern discovery up to recent times. The characters are compelling and almost feel as if they should be a in a novel. This is a very quick read that still gives a wealth of information on the subject.

Entertaining & clever! I love the Bond movies but despair of their message to women. Kate Westbrook's Miss Moneypenny gives me a new heroine to root for. I look forward to the next installment.

Turns out Miss Moneypenny (yes, that Miss Moneypenny) was much more than a secretary back in the day of SIS and Bond. Very clever premise.

Exhaustive & well written.

I enjoyed Final Fling but I found it to be the weakest book in The Moneypenny Diaries series. Portions of the book dragged on a bit and it felt as if nothing much was happening for a while. Not until fairly late in the novel did the author give either Jane Moneypenny or herself much of an opportunity for action. I think that a lack of character development around a few newly introduced characters also weakened the novel. I did enjoy the "surprise" at the end, but it was not at all surprising to me (and a big hint earlier in the story made sure that the surprise would not be too surprising for real Bond fans). All in all, Final Fling was a decent enough conclusion to a very good trilogy, even if it wasn't the best book in the series.½

This novel purports to be from the diaries of Miss Jane Moneypenny, erstwhile secretary to M and frequent confidant of James Bond. The novel successfully operates on three fronts: First, it tells us about who Miss Moneypenny is, where she came from, how she wound up in the Secret Service, and her feelings toward M and James Bond. Second, the novel describes a series of incidents from Moneypenny's tenure with the Secret Service (which relate to the mysterious disappearance of her father during World War II). Third, it describes Bond in the wake of the assassination of his wife Teresa di Vicenzo (Tracy Draco). Much of this culminates in an adventure, told from Moneypenny's point of view, in which she assists Bond during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This book is an absolute must for any fan of the James Bond novels. Westbrook (a pseudonym) has gotten the tone just right and has thrown in many interesting little tidbits and factoids for Bond aficionados to play with.½

Now that we have two film versions of Casino Royale to choose from, why not also revisit the original Fleming stories? M’s personal assistant, Miss Moneypenny , hasbequeathed her diaries, kept in contravention of the Official Secrets Act, to her niece, but to be delivered 10 years after her death. The first volume is set in the uncertain days of the early 60s. Moneypenny knows there is a mole in the secret service, but who? A worthy re-examination of the Bond oeuvre.½

This novel was much more a novel about Jane Moneypenny than was Guardian Angel. Yes, James Bond makes several appearances, but he is much less the focus of the book. Once again, to the author's credit, she has done a terrific job of melding Ian Fleming's characters and world with real world characters (Kim Philby) and events. The novel also offers some very interesting scenes of life inside the British Secret Service (how exactly did M and Bill Tanner respond to Bond's attempt to assassinate M [as told at the beginning of The Man With the Golden Gun]?). I'm eagerly looking forward to the final (hopefully not!) volume in the series.½

This book is like an action novel for the person who is facinated with evolution and with the moden scientific method. It challenges our notions of what we consider to be fact and fiction related to what species are believed to be extinct. This book is a true Jurasic park tale. I loved every page and refer anyone who will listen to me to it. It is a wonderful book for any age, but may be particularly well suited for teenagers who like science.

This is a very interesting companion to the James Bond books. Authorised by the Ian Flemming estate, this has a lot of references to the series and sometimes those footnotes are a little intrusive, but still it's the kind of book that treats the James Bond story as truth and that Kate Westbrook is the grand-niece of Jane Moneypenny who has found her diaries written in secret over her years working for the service.

It's a book for fans of the series of films and books, and set between On her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice it has touching moments about James coping with the death of his wife and other issues during the films. It's the kind of book that you'd need to read or watch the episodes in James' life to completely appreciate them.

A very clever and entertaining novel, the first of a planned trilogy, that manages to fill in the gaps around Fleming's James Bond books convincingly. Written as diaries edited after Moneypenny's death by her niece, we get a realistic backstory of Moneypenny's childhood in Africa; her recruitment into the secret service; and her relationships with boss M, the 00 agents and other MI6 employees.
The starting point is Bond's return to work after the death of his wife Tracy Draco (at the end of OHMSS), and coincides with the real events of the Bay of Pigs debacle and the Cuban Missiles Crisis. The use of real events alongside Fleming's fictional ones gives some gravitas to the novel, and explanatory footnotes on all the people involved - real and imagined, and the workings of the secret service all add to this pseudo-realism.
A brilliant and worthy addition to the Bond-lover's reading list - I can't wait until the next one!
(NB: Retitled as 'The moneypenny diaries: Guardian Angel' for its paperback edition).