A fisherman has caught the largest known freshwater fish to date in Mekong in Cambodia. The man went online with an almost 300 kilogram giant-sweet water ray (Urogymnus polylepis), as it says on the Facebook page of the research project "Wonders of Mekong". The project team around Zeb Hogan from the University of Nevada in Reno has given the fish with a station and has now left it free.
The animal is an adult female, which measures almost four meters in length. The fisherman caught the stingray in Stung Treng Province on June 13 and informed the team around Hogan of his find. The experts then mounted a transmitter on the base of the stingray's tail and now hope that the data will tell them more about the stingray's hiking trails and behavior. The research group gave the animal the name Boramy - the word means "full moon" in Khmer. The fish had been released back into the Mekong on the day of the full moon, and it was also a common pet name for women in Cambodia.
So far, a catfish that was fished out of Mekong in northern Thailand in 2005 was the largest copy of a fresh water fish. He weighed about 293 kilograms. However, this animal was killed and sold for consumption, as the »National Geographic« reports.
