Phnom Penh Post
By Kim Yuthana
Residents look at a giant catfish that was netted in the Tonle Sap River on the weekend. Photograph supplied
An increasingly rare giant catfish, one of the 1,000 or so believed to
exist by the government, died Saturday after becoming tangled not once,
but twice in the nets of fishermen in the capital’s Russei Keo district.
Nao
Thouk, director of the Fishery Administration at the Ministry of
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, told the Post yesterday that the
catfish weighed 220 kilograms, measured 2.6 metres in length and was
thought to be between 30 and 40 years old.
“We had received the
fish’s corpse to keep as a sample for exhibition… as it is a rare fish,”
he said, adding that it would be tested to determine its true age.
Thouk
said that the fish had become entangled on Friday and was released by
fishermen, only to be trapped in a similar net the next day.
On
November 15, 2011, an even larger example of the species, this one
weighing about 300 kilograms, was found floating on the Mekong River
near Chruy Armpel village in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district.
The Mekong’s giant catfish is a critically endangered species and fishing of it is formally banned.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Yuthana at yuthana.kim@phnompenhpost.com
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