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Cambodian fishermen hook giant endangered stingray
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Fantastic creature: Researches release a female giant stingray weighing 181 kilograms and measuring 3.96 meters long into the Mekong River in Cambodia's Stung Treng province, in this handout photo taken on May 5. Local fishermen accidentally caught the endangered freshwater ray when it swallowed a fish that had taken a baited hook. (AFP/Wonders of the Mekong/Chhut Chheana)
C
ambodian fishermen on the Mekong River got a shock when they inadvertently hooked an endangered giant freshwater stingray 4 meters long and weighing 180 kilograms, scientists said on Wednesday.
The female leviathan, one of Southeast Asia's largest and rarest species of fish, was accidentally caught in Stung Treng province last week, when it swallowed a smaller fish that had taken a baited hook.
An international team of experts on the United States-funded Wonders of the Mekong project worked with the fishermen to unhook the ray before weighing and measuring it, and then returning it unharmed into the river.
The giant Mekong River is a crucial habitat for a vast array of species large and small, but project leader Zeb Hogan, a fish biologist from the University of Nevada, said the river's underwater ecosystem was poorly understood.
"They are unseen worlds, underappreciated and out of sight," he said in a statement issued by the university.
More than 1,000 fish species call the Mekong home and the stingray is not the only giant lurking in the muddy waters: the giant catfish and giant barb also reach up to 3 meters long and 270 kilograms in weight.
The study group said in the statement that the remote location where the ray was caught had pools up to 80 meters deep and could harbor even bigger specimens.
But they also warned that underwater video footage showed plastic waste, even in the deepest stretches of the Mekong, along with "ghost nets": nets abandoned by fishers but still able to snare fish.
Environmentalists have long voiced concerns about dam building along the Mekong River that will destroy fish stocks.
The famous waterway starts in China and twists south through parts of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, feeding 60 million people through its basin and tributaries.
