This is the first time an acoustic array has been deployed in Cambodia to track tagged fish. In addition to the biodiversity, the Mekong supports regional fisheries and is a vital food source for much of Southeast Asia. The project focuses on a remote stretch of the river that is home to close to 1000 aquatic species and is thought to be a critically important dry season refuge for endangered freshwater fish. The Wonders of the Mekong researchers are not simply hunting for big fish. The stingray eclipsed the largest freshwater fish previously documented: a 293-kilogram endangered giant catfish caught in the Mekong in Thailand in 2005. After measuring the fish, the team helped release it back into the wild. Scientists got to the site on 14 June and “luckily, they also had the supplies necessary for tagging” the fish, says Hogan, director of the Wonders of the Mekong project who was in Reno at the time. Then, fishers from the same area reported catching a “much bigger” stingray on the night of 13 June. The Wonders of the Mekong team, in the area to deploy acoustic receivers, helped safely return the fish to the river. In early May, local fishers told researchers they had inadvertently caught a 180-kilogram female stingray. The researchers were preparing to put acoustic tags on 200 fish and use arrays of receivers to track their movements through 300 kilometers along the heavily braided Mekong near the city of Stung Treng in northern Cambodia. The team of scientists, part of an international collaboration called Wonders of the Mekong, tagged and released the record-breaking stingray ( Urogymnus polylepis) thanks to having cooperative ties to local fishing communities and a bit of luck. “It’s almost inconceivable that a fish this large still occurs in a river as heavily fished and developed as the Mekong,” says Zeb Hogan, a fish biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno. Thanks to local fishers, a team of scientists on an expedition in Cambodia to tag Mekong River fish has discovered the largest freshwater fish ever documented-a 300-kilogram giant stingray that stretches nearly 4 meters from nose to tail.
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