The bun, which was arrested on June 13, weighed nearly four meters from the muzzle to the tail and weighed just under 300 kilograms, according to a statement Monday from the Wonders of the Mekong, a Cambodian-US joint research project. The previous record for a freshwater fish was a 293kg giant Mekong catfish discovered in Thailand in 2005, the team said. The bobbin was grabbed by a local fisherman south of Stung Treng in northeastern Cambodia. The fisherman alerted a team of scientists from the Wonders of the Mekong project, which has made public its conservation project in communities along the river. The scientists arrived within hours after receiving a midnight call with the news and were surprised by what they saw. “Yes, when you see a fish of this size, especially in freshwater, it’s hard to understand, so I think our whole team was surprised,” Webers of the Mekong leader Zeb Hogan said. “The fact that the fish can still grow so big is a promising sign for the Mekong River,” he said, noting that the waterway faces many environmental challenges. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST The Mekong crosses China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and is home to many species of freshwater giant fish, but environmental pressures are mounting. Scientists fear that a large dam project in recent years could seriously disrupt breeding grounds. A marker has been placed near the fish tail that will send tracking information for next year, providing unprecedented data on the behavior of giant ticks in Cambodia. “The giant miser is a very misunderstood fish. “His name, even his scientific name, has changed several times in the last 20 years,” Hogan said. “It’s all over Southeast Asia, but we have almost no information about it. We do not know about his life story. We do not know about its ecology, about its immigration standards “. Researchers say it is the fourth giant tick reported in the same area in the past two months, all female. They believe this may be a spawning hotspot for the species. The locals nicknamed it “Boramy” – meaning “full moon” – because of its round shape and because the moon was on the horizon when it was released on June 14. In addition to the price that hit the record, the lucky fisherman was compensated with the purchase price, which means that he received a payment of about $ 600. “The big fish in the world are in danger. They are items of high value. They need a lot of time to mature. “So if they are fished before they mature, they do not have the opportunity to reproduce,” Hogan said. “Many of these large fish are migratory, so they need large areas to survive. They are affected by things like the fragmentation of habitats by dams [and are] obviously affected by overfishing. Thus, about 70% of the world’s freshwater giant fish are threatened with extinction and all Mekong species.
