In this photo released by World Wildlife
Fund - National Geographic, two Thai fishermen show
a 646-pound giant catfish they caught in the Mekong
River in Chiang Khong district of Chiang Rai province,
northern Thailand June 11, 2005.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- This big one did
not get away.
Thai fishermen netted a 646-pound catfish
believed to have been the world's largest freshwater
fish ever caught in Thailand, a researcher said Thursday.
The nearly 9-foot-long Mekong giant
catfish was landed May 1 by villagers in Chiang Khong,
a remote district in northern Thailand, and weighed
by Thai fisheries department officials, said Zeb Hogan,
who leads an international project to locate and study
the world's largest freshwater fish species.
He confirmed it was the heaviest fish
on record since Thailand started keeping such statistics
in 1981.
The fishermen had hoped to sell the
fish to environmental groups, which planned to release
it to spawn upriver, but it died before it could be
handed over and then was chopped up and sold in pieces
to villagers as food.
646-pound catfishHogan, whose work is
funded by the World Wildlife Fund and the National Geographic
Society, said he is planning to write a paper about
the catch for a scientific journal.
"That's the best way to document
this kind of thing,'' he told The Associated Press by
telephone.
The Mekong giant catfish was listed
as critically endangered in 2003 after research showed
its numbers had fallen by at least 80 percent in the
past 13 years.
Fishermen believe the catfish species
has been declining largely because of dams and environmental
damage along the Mekong River home to more species
of giant fish than any other river, said an earlier
statement by WWF and the society. |