(UTV | CAMBODIA) – A fisher in Cambodia has caught what scientists say is the world’s largest recorded freshwater fish, a giant stingray.
The stingray measured almost 4 meters (13 feet) from snout to tail and weighed slightly less than 300kg (660lbs), according to a statement on Monday by Wonders of the Mekong, a joint Cambodian-US research project.
The previous record for a freshwater fish was a 293-kg (646-lb) Mekong giant catfish, discovered in Thailand in 2005, the group said.
Christened “Boramy”– meaning the full moon in the Khmer language – because of her bulbous shape, the stingray was caught south of Stung Treng on the Mekong River in northeastern Cambodia. It took about a dozen men to haul the fish ashore.
They alerted a nearby team of scientists from the Wonders of the Mekong project, which has publicized its conservation work in communities along the river.
The scientists arrived within hours of getting a post-midnight call with the news, and were amazed at what they saw.
“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.
The team that rushed to the site inserted a tagging device near the stingray’s tail before releasing it. The device will send tracking information for the next year, providing unprecedented data on its behaviour.
“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 it is the fourth giant stingray reported in the same area in the past two months, and all of them are females. They think this may be a spawning hotspot for the species.
The fisher who caught Boramy, in addition to the honour of having caught the record-breaker, was compensated at the market rate, meaning he received a payment of about $600.
