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Scientists said on Wednesday that Cambodian fishermen on the Mekong River inadvertently hooked an endangered giant water resources stingray four meters long and weighing 180 kilograms. The female leviathan, one of Southeast Asia’s largest and rarest fish species, was accidentally caught last week in Stung Treng province after swallowing a smaller fish that had taken a baited hook. An international team of experts from the US-funded Wonders of the Mekong project assisted the fishermen in unhooking the ray before weighing and measuring it before returning it to the river unharmed.
The massive Mekong is an important habitat for a wide range of species, large and small, but project leader Zeb Hogan, a fish biologist at the University of Nevada, said the river’s underwater environment was poorly understood.
“They are unseen worlds, underrated and out of sight,” he said in a university statement.
The Mekong is home to over 1,000 fish species, and the stingray is not the only giant lurking in the muddy waters; the giant catfish and giant barb can grow to be three metres long and 270 kilogrammes in weight.
According to the study group, the remote area where the ray was caught has pooled up to 80 metres deep and could bay even larger specimens.
They also warned that underwater surveillance video showed plastic waste even in the deepest reaches of the Mekong, as well as “ghost nets,” which had been abandoned by fishermen but could still catch fish.
Environmentalists have long expressed concern about dam construction along the Mekong River, which they believe will devastate fish stocks.
The famous waterway begins in China and winds its way south through Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Vietnam, feeding 60 million people via its basin and tributaries.
