The Chalumna River ( xh, Tyolomnqa) is a river in the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

. It is approximately 78 km long, forming at the confluence of two small rivers, the Qugwala in the West and the Mtyolo in the East. It empties into the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

through an estuary near

Kayser's Beach Kayser's Beach is a small village on the shore of the Indian Ocean, southwest of East London in the Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and G ...

. Its catchment area of 441 km makes it one of the smallest river basins on South Africa's eastern coast. Its tributaries are Nyatyora, Nxwashu, Quru and Mpintso on the left and Rode, Twecu and Tsaba on the right. Its mouth is located about 45 km south west of the Buffalo Estuary at

East London East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the ...

. The

African longfin eel The African longfin eel (''Anguilla mossambica''), also known simply as the longfin eel, is an eel in the family Anguillidae.

''(Anguilla mossambica)'' is common in its waters.

History

It was near the mouth of this river in 1938 that Captain Hendrik Goosen trawled a catch of fish, one of which Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer preserved. This fish was later identified as a

coelacanth The coelacanths ( ) are fish belonging to the order Actinistia that includes two extant species in the genus ''Latimeria'': the West Indian Ocean coelacanth (''Latimeria chalumnae''), primarily found near the Comoro Islands off the east coast ...

, a species which was previously thought to be long extinct and was at that point in time only known from the

fossil record A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

. After the discovery, the name of the Chalumna River became part of the scientific name of the species, ''Latimeria chalumnae''. Historically the Chalumna River formed the northern border of the former

Ciskei Ciskei (, or ) was a Bantustan for the Xhosa people-located in the southeast of South Africa. It covered an area of , almost entirely surrounded by what was then the Cape Province, and possessed a small coastline along the shore of the Indian O ...

shoreline until 27 April 1994 when all the

Apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

era political regions were reincorporated into South Africa.

References

Rivers of the Eastern Cape Internal borders of South Africa {{SouthAfrica-river-stub

History

See also

References