Biggest Freshwater Fish Discovered in Cambodia in Mekong River According to Scientists
Locals in Cambodia have discovered the world’s largest freshwater fish according to researchers. It is a giant stingray which weighs 661 pounds (300 kg), 3.98m long and 2.2m wide.
Locals in Cambodia have discovered the world’s largest freshwater fish according to researchers. It is a giant stingray which weighs 661 pounds (300 kg), 3.98m long and 2.2m wide.
The villagers captured the female stingray in the Mekong river on June 13.
The Mekong river flows from the Tibetan Plateau through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The fish has been named ‘Boramy’ meaning the full moon in the local Khmer language because of its bulbous shape. Because of the weight of the fish, a dozen men had to work together to get the fish ashore.
The fishermen alerted the scientists from the ‘Wonders of the Mekong’ project post midnight. The scientists from the project were amazed to witness the size of the stingray.
“When you see a fish this size, especially in freshwater, it is hard to comprehend, so I think all of our team was stunned,” Wonders of the Mekong leader Zeb Hogan said in an online interview from the University of Nevada in Reno.
“In 20 years of researching giant fish in rivers and lakes on six continents, this is the largest freshwater fish that we've encountered or that's been documented anywhere worldwide”, said the biologist.
"Finding and documenting this fish is remarkable, and a rare positive sign of hope, even more so because it occurred in the Mekong, a river that's currently facing many challenges.” he expressed.
The scientists have inserted a tagging device near the stingray’s tail before releasing it into the waters. This is to track and learn more about the giant stingray’s behaviour as it is an endangered species.
“The giant stingray is a very poorly understood fish. Its name, even its scientific name, has changed several times in the last 20 years,” Hogan said. “It’s found throughout Southeast Asia, but we have almost no information about it. We don’t know about its life history. We don’t know about its ecology, about its migration patterns.”
Researchers say that this is the fourth giant stingray reported in the same area in the past two months, all of which are females. Scientists believe that the area may be a breeding spot for this species.
The fisher who caught the giant species has been rewarded with a payment of $600.
After being released the stingray disappeared into the deep muddy waters around dusk.