By Grace Tsoi
BBC News
Image supply, Wonders of the Mekong
Image caption, Scientists explain the 300kg stingray is the ideal freshwater fish ever recorded
A 300kg (661lb) stingray caught in the Mekong river in Cambodia is the ideal freshwater fish ever documented, scientists explain.
It unseated the outdated file-holder, a 646lb (293kg) Mekong wide catfish caught in Thailand in 2005.
There will not be one of these thing as a professional file-keeping or database of the sector’s ideal freshwater fish.
The Mekong is rich in biodiversity but overfishing, dams and pollution threaten its fragile ecosystem.
It flows from the Tibetan Plateau thru China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
“In 20 years of researching wide fish in rivers and lakes on six continents, that is the ideal freshwater fish that we’ve encountered or that’s been documented wherever worldwide,” said Zeb Hogan, a biologist who leads Wonders of the Mekong, a USAID-funded conservation project.
“Finding and documenting this fish is outstanding, and a uncommon sure signal of hope, even more so on myth of it happened in the Mekong, a river that’s in the point out time going thru many challenges,” added Dr Hogan, who’s furthermore a professor on the University of Nevada, Reno.
Image supply, Wonders of the Mekong
Image caption, The stingray changed into studied and tagged ahead of…
Image supply, Wonders of the Mekong
Image caption, … it changed into launched again into the water
The conservation project works with the Cambodian Fisheries Administration to situation up a network of fishermen who alert the researchers if they engage wide or endangered fish.
On the night of 13 June, a neighborhood fisherman on Koh Preah island known as to say researchers that he had caught a “very substantial” stingray – it grew to vary into out to be 3.98m prolonged and a pair of.2m vast.
After being fitted with an acoustic tag to trace its future circulate, the stingray changed into launched again into the river.
It disappeared into the muddy waters of the Mekong around dusk when the moon changed into already up in the sky, Dr Hogan said.
Within the local Khmer language, the fish is known as “Boramy”, which implies plump moon.
“The stingray gain is evidence that the pure world can nonetheless yield new and extraordinary discoveries, and that the vast majority of the ideal aquatic creatures remain woefully understudied,” Dr Hogan said.
The wide freshwater stingray is an endangered species. Right here is the second wide stingray examined by the crew since Can even – the sooner one weighed 181kg.
“When file fish are discovered, it capability the aquatic ambiance is nonetheless reasonably wholesome. Right here is in disagreement to what we like seen in locations love the Yantgze River, the place scientists reported the extinction of the Chinese paddlefish,” Dr Hogan said.
“The Mekong’s deep pools sustain existence a ways past these impressive giants. Spawning on this crucial habitat produces billions of fish yearly which be sure the food safety and livelihoods for millions of oldsters in Cambodia and Vietnam.”