Meet ‘Boramy’, World’s Largest Freshwater Fish Caught In Cambodia. It Will Be Tracked For A Year

Giant stingray captured in Mekong river measured almost 13 ft from snout to tail & weighed a little under 300kg. It was released back into the water after inserting a tagging device near its tail.

This handout photo released by the US-funded Wonders of the Mekong project shows the giant freshwater stingray caught and released in the Mekong river in Cambodia's Stung Treng province.

A giant stingray was caught in the Mekong river in Cambodia last week, and it was the world’s largest recorded freshwater fish, according to scientists from the Southeast Asian nation and the United States. The stingray captured on June 13 measured almost 13 feet from snout to tail and weighed a little under 300 kilograms, news agency Associated Press reported, quoting a statement issued by Wonders of the Mekong, a joint US-Cambodia research project.

According to the group, the previous record for a freshwater fish was a 293-kg Mekong giant catfish, netted in Thailand in 2005.

After the stingray landed in his net south of Stung Treng in northeastern Cambodia, a local fisherman made a post-midnight call to scientists from the Wonders of the Mekong project who are undertaking conservation work and had publicised about it in communities living along the river.

A team arrived within hours, only to be surprised to see the find, the AP report said.

“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,” Wonders of the Mekong leader Zeb Hogan was quated as saying in an online interview from the University of Nevada in Reno, which is partnering with the Cambodian Fisheries Administration and USAID, the US government’s international development agency, in the project.

He said the catch was not just about a new record, but “the fact that the fish can still get this big is a hopeful sign for the Mekong River”. 

The river running through the Asian nations of China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, is home to several species of giant freshwater fish. Hogan, however, noted that Mekong faces many environmental challenges. A major dam project, which scientists believe may be seriously disrupting spawning grounds, is of particular concern, according to the AP report.

Record Catch Released Back Into The River, To Be Tracked For A Year

The giant female stingray caught by the local fisherman was released back into the river after the scientists’ team fitted a tagging device near its tail. The report said this device will track the fish’s movements and send information to the scientists for the next year, providing data on giant stingray behaviour in Cambodia.

“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 was quoted as saying. “It’s found throughout Southeast 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.”

According to researchers, it’s the fourth giant stingray to have been caught in the same area in the last two months, and all of them have been females. They believe the area to be a spawning hotspot for the fish.

Meanwhile, the AP report said, local residents nicknamed the stingray “Boramy” or “full moon” because of its round shape, and also because the moon was on the horizon when the fish was released on June 14. To compensate the record-breaker fisherman who caught the giant stingray, he was paid around $600, the market rate for his catch, the report said.