The world’s largest recorded freshwater fish, a giant stingray, has been caught in the Mekong River inThe stingray, captured on 13 June, measured almost four metres from snout to tail and weighed just under 300kg, according to a statement on Monday by Wonders of the Mekong, a joint Cambodian-US research project.
The scientists arrived within hours of getting a post-midnight call with the news, and were amazed at what they saw. “Yeah, when you see a fish this size, especially in freshwater, it is hard to comprehend, so I think all of our team was stunned,” said the Wonders of the Mekong leader, Zeb Hogan. “The giant stingray is a very poorly understood fish. Its name, even its scientific name, has changed several times in the last 20 years,” Hogan said. “It’s found throughout south-east Asia, but we have almost no information about it. We don’t know about its life history. We don’t know about its ecology, about its migration patterns.”