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World's Largest Freshwater Fish Caught in Mekong River

Min Bannister

Min Bannister

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The world's largest freshwater fish has been caught in the Mekong River in Cambodia and no, it is not a catfish but a gigantic stingray. Do go and look at the photo at the link to see this amazing creature. :D

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-61862169

A 300kg (661lb) stingray caught in the Mekong river in Cambodia is the biggest freshwater fish ever documented, scientists say.
It unseated the previous record-holder, a 646lb (293kg) Mekong giant catfish caught in Thailand in 2005.
There is no official record-keeping or database of the world's biggest freshwater fish.
The Mekong is rich in biodiversity but overfishing, dams and pollution threaten its fragile ecosystem.
It flows from the Tibetan Plateau through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
"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 Zeb Hogan, a biologist who leads Wonders of the Mekong, a USAID-funded conservation project.
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You will be relieved to hear that they released it back into the water alive.
 
Min Bannister said:
The world's largest freshwater fish has been caught in the Mekong River in Cambodia and no, it is not a catfish but a gigantic stingray. Do go and look at the photo at the link to see this amazing creature. :D

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-61862169



You will be relieved to hear that they released it back into the water alive.
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I saw the first picture at work briefly and just assumed it was a catfish in a dark tank...
 
stingray.jpg
 
Must be a pretty cunning critter to get that big without being caught. I wonder what happened this time. Maybe it's getting a little old & slow?
 
There’s an episode of River Monsters in which Jeremy Wade hooks a giant stingray, also on the Mekong in Thailand.

Jeremy initially hooks on to what he believes to be a 700-pound giant, however it takes over an hour for the fish to show. Jeremy Wade has already snapped a tendon trying to bring the fish in when his rod snaps releasing the beast.
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Jeremy tries again, and the second time he hooks into a slightly smaller 400 pound fish. However, this one is still extremely difficult. He is able to bring the fish in. Amazingly, it gives birth once he caught it.
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The female he brought in was 5.9 feet from nose to tail, around 6 feet across, roughly 400 pounds and it took 6 people to roll her upright in the net. She gave birth to two live pups each with 2 inch barbs and a third pup was still inside. The male he brought in was about 4 1/2 feet across, which is quite big for a male as females can and will grow up to 8 times larger than the males, and was 175 pounds. The first catch that snapped the rod after over 2 hours, tore his bicep, spun the boat, almost took the boat down, and towed them up river was, at the least, 700 pounds, making it a female.
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Sillyhuron said:
Must be a pretty cunning critter to get that big without being caught. I wonder what happened this time. Maybe it's getting a little old & slow?
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I think they're rare in the first place & bottom dwellers making catching them hard.
 
Sillyhuron said:
Must be a pretty cunning critter to get that big without being caught. I wonder what happened this time. Maybe it's getting a little old & slow?
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The Mekong is wide, deep (nearly 200m at most, during the rainy season*), and extremely muddy so there's a lot of space for monsters to go undetected.

*EDIT: One site says that. Others say the max depth is 90, or 100 metres, in certain deep pools. These deep pools are where the stingrays live. Here's a recent article about exploration of these pools, including a 2009 photo of another massive stingray.
 
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The ‘sting’ seems to be a defensive weapon. Looks like they prowl the river bottom, feed on clams & crabs & I’ve not read they use the stinger on them before feeding.

If that’s so, I’m wondering what creature/s the sting was evolved to fight otf. They’ve been around a few million years so maybe the sting evolved to kill or at least stun some sort of large predator, now extinct..

Alternatively, maybe it’s just they’re more likely to be predated by larger fish when young & it comes in handy then.
 
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