World’s Biggest Fish Ogled in Cambodia

Last week fishers in Cambodia landed the world’s largest freshwater fish, a giant 13-foot stingray weighing 661 pounds. The fish the size of a baby grand piano was mercifully returned to its rightful place in the murky waters of the Mekong River.

Luckily for biologist Zeb Hogan, who was at the time doing research on the river’s aquatic diversity in the area, the fishers alerted him to the catch. Hogan and his team at Wonders of the Mekong Project rushed to the site with three industrial scales.

As the New York Times reports it, Hogan had been searching for the largest freshwater fish since 2005, when he was on hand to weigh the previous record-holder, a 646-pound catfish that was landed in this same river, but in Thailand.

“The fact that the world’s largest freshwater fish was caught in the Mekong is remarkable,” Hogan said. “This is a heavily populated region, and the river faces a ton of challenges, including lots of fishing.”

Hogan’s team equipped the big fish with an accessory – a never-used-before acoustic tag to track the stingray’s movements for up to one year. The team had  previously installed an array of 36 underwater receivers along this stretch of the river.

Hogan believes this part of the Mekong is a critical breeding ground for the ginormous stingrays, as well as home to freshwater dolphins, giant soft-shell turtles, giant catfish, and giant barb, a kind of carp.

Watch the big fish get weighed, tagged, and released here: youtube.com/watch?v=agoPmJWBjvo.

Photo credit: FISHBIO