Live as One of Big Freshwater Fish, The Mekong River Giant Catfish

Live as One of Big Freshwater Fish, The Mekong River Giant Catfish  - Freshwater Fish | The world’s largest scaleless and big freshwater fish lives a tenuous existence inside the murky brown waters of Southeast Asia’s, The Mekong River. Proficient at reaching an almost 10 feet (3 meters ) long and 650 pounds (295 kilograms ) for it's weight, Mekong giant catfish in the mekong river live mainly inside the lower half the mekong river system, in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.

Once there was plenty of them in the entire Mekong basin, their population have dropped reaching 95 percent in the last century, which critically endangered, and now they are upon the brink of extinction. Overfishing is the main culprit inside the giant catfish’s decline, but damming of Mekong tributaries, breeding grounds, destruction of spawning and also the mekong river siltation have been the major cause of it. Some experts think there may merely be a couple of hundred this big freshwater fishes adults left.

As big freshwater fish, the mekong river giant catfish have very low-set eyes and therefore are silvery to dark gray on top and whitish to yellow upon the bottom. They‘re toothless herbivores who live from the plants and algae inside the mekong river. The characteristic of juveniles is that they wear catfish “whiskers, ” commonly called barbels, but these features shrink as they simply age.

Live as One of Big Freshwater Fish, The Mekong River Giant Catfish

As a highly migratory creatures, this big freshwater fish giant catfish require large stretches of the mekong river for their seasonal journeys and specific environmental conditions with their spawning and breeding areas. These big freshwater fish thought to live primarily in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake and migrate many miles north to spawning  area the way down the mekong river in Thailand. Human interference and building of Dam, have severely disrupted these big freshwater fish lifecycle.

International efforts for protecting this species as one of big freshwater fish has set. It‘s now illegal in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, to harvest giant catfish, especially in the mekong river. And recently in Thailand, a number of fishers pledged to prevent catching this big freshwater fish of giant catfish to honor the king’s 60th year upon the throne. However, enforcement of fishing restrictions in several isolated villages down the mekong river is almost impossible, and illicit and bycatch takings still continue.

Reference: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com