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. 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.
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Key Points:
- Fishermen in Cambodia initially informed Dr. Hogan and his colleagues at the Wonders of the Mekong Project, which is funded by the U.S. 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.
- Three industrial scales were lined up by team members as they hurried to the little river island known as Koh Preah. They lifted the stingray out of the water and onto the scales using a sheet to determine its weight.
- The finding was made less than a month after a 400-pound huge stingray was also captured and released close by. This year has also seen the capture of two other huge rays.
About the Fish Population Decline:
- Big freshwater fish populations are often declining as a result of a number of reasons, including dam building, overfishing, and climate change. Additionally, several large fish species face extinction.
- Fortunately, recent reports of big fish have not just been about stingrays. A record-breaking lake sturgeon weighing 240 pounds was captured and released in the Detroit River in 2021.
- 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.