The monster fish announced itself with four resounding whacks of its tail,thrashing against the net that had trapped it in the pale brown water of the Mekong River.It was a fish called the giant catfish and it was the size of a grizzly bear,taking 5 boatmen an hour to pull it in and 10 men to lift it when they reached the shore in this remove village in northern Thailand.
It was only after their catch had been chopped into pieces and sold that they learned how special it was.At 2.7 meters,or 9 feet,long and weighing 293 kilograms,or 646 pounds,it may be the biggest fresh water fish ever recorded.
But in one of the wolrd;s more surprising mysteries,nobody really knows which is the biggest species of fish lurking in the waters of the Mekong or the Amazon or the Yangtze or the Congo or the Colorado or Lake Baikal.
When the giant catfish was caught in May,Zeb Hogan,a biologist,rushed here from an expedition in Mongolia to take a look.It was his first trophy in a project to identify and study the world's largest freshwater fish in the hope protecting their habitats and slowing their extinsion.
Sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the World Wildlife Fund,Hogan has embarked on an 18-month expedition that will take him to five continents more than a dozen rivers.Some species may already be too rare to study,but he has started with the Mekong ,which he said had seven species of huge fish,more than any other river,along with at least 750 other species.
All of them are threatened,as are fish in rivers all over the world,by overfishing,pollution and development,including major dam projects.The Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianadon gigas)
may be the first to disppear from the river,he said.The few that remains can be spotted now only in central Cambodia and here,just below the Golden Triangle,where northern Thailand,
Laos and Myanmar meet.
So far,Hogan said,no one has made a credible claim to top this year's trophy.It is five times the size of the biggest catfish recorded in the US,a 121 pound Missisippi River fish that was also caught in May.
"I keep expecting people to send me photos or records of larger fish,but noboy has " he said.The candidate species must grow to at least 200 pounds or longer than 6 feet-fish like sturgeon,lungfish,gars,stingray,carp,salmon,perch and paddlefish.Already Hogan has collection of unconfirmed fish stories-3 meter catfish in Bulgaria,500 kilogram stingrays in Southeast Asia and 5- meter arapaima in the Amazon,none of them well documented.
" A lot of people say the arapaima is the largest freshwater fish,but when you look at the records,there's no reliable record of any over 200 kilograms,and certainly not over 300 kilograms " he said.
Hoganhas his own personal candidates,the Chinese paddlefish in the Yangtze and the giant stingray her ein the Mekong.
"I saw a stingray in Cambodia in 2003 that was 4.13 meters long " he said " It had a disc 2 meters across and 2 meters long,and the tail was 2.13 meter long.That fish could have been it,
but we couldn't weigh it,it was too big ",
When he began to spread the world in Cambodia that he was looking for giant fish,Hogan said,it was stingray he had in mind " I though I'd get 50 phone calls the first week,but nobody contacted us " he said " So they're more rere than I though they were."
The giant catfish have been disappearing fast,.from more than 60 a year caught here in the early 1990s to just a few today.Their decline coincides with the completion of the first of a series of dams being built upriver in southern China.
"The damming and the blasting of rapids have changed the habitat and the reiver flow" said Boonluen Chinarath,the village chief in Hat Khrai,who said he had caught as many as 100 giant catfish in nearly a half-century of fishing.
"The river rises and falls more quickly than before " he said "Maybe it's up today and maybe it's down tomorrow."
Many fish cue theie imigrations to the rise and fall of the water,Hogan said.The giant catfish are caught in April and May when they swim uprivr to spawn just north of here.Before he headed out on May 1,one of the fishermen,Thirayuth Panthayom,made sure luck would be on his side.He said he prayed at the shrine to the God of Catfish and begged his boat to help him
"Please,Miss Boat,let me catch something today and I'll sacrifice a chicken for you ".
He had only been out for 15 minutes when he said he saw the fish smack the water four times with its tail- " Pung ! pung ! pung ! " it took his crew an hour to pull it in.
His father,as owner of the boat,earned nearly 80.000 baht,or about $ 2000,for the fish from the village fishing association,a fortune in rural Thailand.Thirayuth,like each of the other four members of the crew,got 7.000 baht of this,which he said he gave right back to his father.
As part of its permit to fish for these endangered catfish,the village association then sold the fish to the Department of Fisheries,which harvests their eggs and sperm as part of a captive breeding program.
After that,the fish are to be returned to the river.But,as usually happens,this fish,a female,did not survive the harvesting procedure,in which its belly is vigorously massaged and manipulated
In the end,the men of the village cut in into giant steaks and sold it.When he tried a bit,
Thirayuth said,it tasted soft and sweet and mild.
"Its hard to describe " he said " You have to try it yourself."
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
.: Forum Diskusi Budaya Tionghua dan Sejarah Tiongkok :.
.: Kunjungi website global : http://www.budaya-tionghoa.org :.
.: Untuk bergabung : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/budaya_tionghua :.
.: Jaringan pertemanan Friendster : [EMAIL PROTECTED] :.
| Indonesian languages | Indonesian language learn | Indonesian |
| Dari |
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "budaya_tionghua" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
