An increasingly rare giant
catfish, one of the 1,000 or so believed to exist by the government, died
Saturday after becoming tangled not once, but twice in the nets of fishermen in
the capital’s Russei Keo district.
Nao Thouk, director of the Fishery Administration
at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, told the Post yesterday
that the catfish weighed 220 kilograms, measured 2.6 metres in length and was
thought to be between 30 and 40 years old.
“We had received the fish’s corpse to keep as a
sample for exhibition… as it is a rare fish,” he said, adding that it would be
tested to determine its true age.
Thouk said that the fish had become entangled on
Friday and was released by fishermen, only to be trapped in a similar net the
next day.
On November 15, 2011, an even larger example of
the species, this one weighing about 300 kilograms, was found floating on the
Mekong River near Chruy Armpel village in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district.
The Mekong’s giant catfish is a critically
endangered species and fishing of it is formally banned.
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