Largest Freshwater Fish Caught Cambodia: When a fisher in Cambodia caught a freshwater fish, a giant stingray, it came out to be the world’s largest recorded freshwater fish as per the scientists.
The fish was captured on June 13th. According to the statement given by Wonders of the Mekong, which is a joint Cambodian-US research project, on Monday, the length of fish’s stingray was almost 4 metres i.e. 13 feet from snout to tail and its weight was slightly less than 300kg i.e. 660lbs.
The previous largest freshwater fish caught was of 293-kg i.e. 646-lb. It was a Mekong giant catfish, which was discovered in Thailand in 2005 according to the information given by the group.
Freshwater fish are those fish that spend their entire lives in freshwater, opposed to giant marine species like bluefin tuna and marlin, or other species of fish that keep on migrating between freshwater and saltwater like beluga sturgeon.
The location where the giant stingray was caught is south of Stung Treng on the Mekong River in north east of Cambodia. To haul the fish ashore, it took about a dozen men.
After catching the fish post-midnight, they alerted a team of scientists from the Wonders of the Mekong project which was working nearby.
The scientists reached the location within hours of getting the call, and were totally amazed at the sight. It was hard for them to digest that this huge sized fish was found in freshwater.
The discovery of the stingray in freshwater was not just about setting a new world record. It was something else. Wonders of the Mekong leader Zeb Hogan said that finding such huge sized fish in the Mekong River was a hopeful sign since the waterway is facing many environmental challenges.
The Mekong River goes through six countries: China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It has always been home to several different species of giant freshwater fish but environmental pressures are continuously rising. Scientists fear that the major programme of dam building may be seriously disrupting spawning grounds in recent years.
Big fish are endangered species globally. They are high-valued species and take quite a long time to mature. If they are fished before they could get mature, then they do not reproduce. They are impacted by several environmental factors and fishing, and need large areas to survive. So around 70% of giant freshwater fish are globally threatened with extinction, and all of these species are Mekong species.
