Six critically endangered Mekong big catfish — one of many largest and rarest freshwater fish on the planet — have been caught and launched in Cambodia, reviving hopes for the survival of the species.
The underwater giants can develop as much as 3 metres lengthy and weigh as much as 300kg. They are discovered solely in south-east Asia’s Mekong River however previously inhabited your entire 3,044-mile (4,900km)-long river all the best way from its outlet in Vietnam to its northern reaches in China’s Yunnan province.
The inhabitants has plummeted by 80% in latest many years because of rising pressures from overfishing, dams that block the migratory path the fish comply with to spawn and different disruptions.
Few of the tens of millions of people that depend upon the Mekong for his or her livelihoods have ever seen a large catfish. To discover six of the giants inside 5 days is unprecedented.
The first two had been on the Tonle Sap River, a tributary of the Mekong not removed from Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. They got identification tags and launched. On Tuesday, fishermen caught 4 extra big catfish together with two longer than 2 metres that weighed 120kg and 131kg respectively. The captured fish had been apparently migrating from their floodplain habitats close to Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap Lake northward alongside the Mekong River, more likely to spawning grounds in northern Cambodia, Laos or Thailand.
“It’s a hopeful signal that the species will not be in imminent, like within the subsequent few years, danger of extinction, which supplies conservation actions time to be carried out and to proceed to bend the curve away from decline and towards restoration,” stated Dr. Zeb Hogan, a University of Nevada Reno analysis biologist who leads the US Agency for International Development-funded Wonders of the Mekong challenge.
Much remains to be unknown concerning the big fish, however over the previous twenty years a joint conservation programme by the Wonders of the Mekong and the Cambodian Fisheries Administration has caught, tagged and launched about 100 of them, gaining insights into how the catfish migrate, the place they dwell and the well being of the species.
“This data is used to ascertain migration corridors and shield habitats to attempt to assist these fish survive sooner or later,” stated Hogan.
The Mekong big catfish is woven into the area’s cultural material, depicted in 3,000-year-old cave work, revered in folklore and thought of an emblem of the river, whose fisheries feed tens of millions and are valued at $10bn yearly.
Local communities play an important function in conservation. Fishermen now know concerning the significance of reporting unintended catches of uncommon and endangered species to officers, enabling researchers to achieve locations the place fish have been captured and measure and tag them earlier than releasing them.
“Their cooperation is important for our analysis and conservation efforts,” Heng Kong, the director of Cambodia’s Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute, stated in a press release.
Apart from the Mekong big catfish, the river can be dwelling to different massive fish together with the salmon carp, which was considered extinct till it was noticed earlier this 12 months, and the enormous sting ray.
That 4 of those fish had been caught and tagged in a single day is probably going the “huge fish story of the century for the Mekong”, stated Brian Eyler, the director of the Washington-based Stimson Center’s south-east Asia programme. He stated that seeing them confirmed that the annual fish migration was nonetheless sturdy regardless of all of the pressures dealing with the setting alongside the Mekong.
“Hopefully what occurred this week will present the Mekong nations and the world that the Mekong’s mighty fish inhabitants is uniquely particular and must be conserved,” he stated.
