EAST LONDON MUSEUM

This museum has two treasures: the coelacanth and the dodo egg. Adapt or die. The first one survived, the second one has indeed disappeared. The coelacanth, as the dictionary tells us, is "a fossilized crossopterygian marine fish, whose fins are sketches of the limbs of tetrapods". It was thought to have been extinct for 60 or 70 million years. In late 1938, Captain Goosen caught a strange fish in his nets off East London and presented it to the museum for examination. Scientists concluded that it was a coelacanth, weighing 57 kg and measuring 1.60 m long. An extraordinary phenomenon, this prehistoric fish, identified in fossils more than 300 million years old, has survived to the present day. It is sometimes fished in the Mozambique Channel. The second treasure is the dodo egg, a bird from Mauritius that has been extinct since 1693. The museum has the only egg in the world, preciously locked in a trunk. You will see the replica in the gallery. Sensational lovers will also be seduced by the exhibition devoted to the sinking of theOceanos. This cruise ship had left the port of East London on August 3, 1991 at 3:35 pm, at 10:23 pm, after the engines stopped, the radio officer launched a distress call, the next day at dawn, the abandonment order was given in the middle of a storm, the rescue operation of the 571 passengers made the glory of the South African Navy. No one missing and no one dead. On entering, the rowboat where 40 people spent a night of anguish.