These giant catfish were once plentiful throughout the Mekong basin, but their numbers are believed to have dropped by at least 95 percent over the past century. While scientists don’t know exactly how the fish move, the Mekong giant catfish is believed to spend much of its time feeding in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake and then migrating hundreds of miles north to spawning grounds in Thailand. Highly migratory, the species requires large stretches of river and very specific environmental conditions for its seasonal journey to spawn and breed. It can reach up to 440 pounds in only six years. The Mekong giant catfish has one of the fastest growth rates of any fish in the world. After about a year, they become herbivores, and eat plants and algae. (Juveniles have barbels, but these features shrink as they age.)Īs babies, they feed on zooplankton in the river and are known to be cannibalistic. They are distinguished from other large catfish species by their near-total lack of barbels, or “whiskers,” as well as by the absence of teeth. Gray to white in color and lacking stripes, the Mekong giant catfish has very low-set eyes, which gives it a slightly sorrowful appearance. According to the Guinness Book of Records, a nine-foot-long individual caught in northern Thailand in 2005 weighted an astounding 646 pounds, making it the largest exclusively freshwater fish ever recorded.ĭespite its gargantuan size, but also because of it, the giant catfish lives a tenuous existence in the murky waters of its native river, Southeast Asia’s Mekong, where its numbers have plummeted so dramatically that the species is on the brink of extinction. The Texas state record for freshwater fish may have been broken by an alligator gar that weighed close to 300 pounds in May, but the fisherman decided to release the fish rather than kill it and bring it in to be weighed.The Mekong giant catfish is the official freshwater heavyweight champion of the world.A record-breaking lake sturgeon weighing 240 pounds was captured and released in the Detroit River in 2021. Fortunately, recent reports of big fish have not just been about stingrays.Additionally, several large fish species face extinction. Big freshwater fish populations are often declining as a result of a number of reasons, including dam building, overfishing, and climate change.This year has also seen the capture of two other huge rays. The finding was made less than a month after a 400-pound huge stingray was also captured and released close by.They lifted the stingray out of the water and onto the scales using a sheet to determine its weight. Three industrial scales were lined up by team members as they hurried to the little river island known as Koh Preah.Agency for International Development and seeks to preserve the aquatic variety of the Southeast Asian river, that they had caught a stingray that was the largest ever seen. Hogan and his colleagues at the Wonders of the Mekong Project, which is funded by the U.S. Fishermen in Cambodia initially informed Dr.The 42-year-old fisherman from Kaoh Preah, an isolated island in the Mekong River, in northern Cambodia, didn’t realise was that the ray would eventually be designated the largest documented freshwater fish in the world.īuy Prime Test Series for all Banking, SSC, Insurance & other exams The enormous stingray Moul Thun snagged on the end of line by a fisherman was larger than any fish ever seen, the hunter was aware.
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