The Sundarban
Bangkok, Thailand — When a 200-pound Mekong giant catfish turned up at a flooded train station in the Thai metropolis of Chiang Mai last year, it stopped folks in their tracks. Seeing a six-to-seven-foot long fish trapped outside a tag sales space was a surreal look—and it raised an glaring examine: The place did it approach from?
It certainly didn’t approach from its natural habitat—the Mekong River, which runs via several Southeast Asian countries. The critically endangered species is one in every of the arena’s largest freshwater fish and has become vanishingly rare in the wild in Thailand. Instead, the train station fish was with out a doubt raised in captivity—perhaps escaping from a private pond, temple pool, or stocked reservoir after floodwaters had breached containment.
The incident equipped a rare see of a hidden world: Across Thailand, megafish savor the Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) and the similarly threatened giant barb (Catlocarpio siamensis) are being bred in large numbers in captivity. Authorities hatcheries, commercial farms, and private owners raise them for fishing ponds, spiritual applications, or ornamental displays. Altogether, these captive fish obtain a vast and largely undocumented population of endangered fish that dwarfs what’s likely left in the wild.
Now, scientists are beginning to ask a pivotal examine: May these captive stocks play a feature in reversing the decline of megafish populations in the wild? “Captive stocks may very correctly be more than merely a fallback,” says Zeb Hogan, a biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who has studied Mekong megafish for decades. “With the suitable science and conservation efforts, they may abet bolster wild populations and sustain these iconic fish from disappearing altogether.”
(Meet the arena’s largest freshwater fish.)
Fish farming is normal in the Mekong Delta, and catfish (savor these pictured in 2008) are popular. Their larger brethren, Mekong giant catfish, also appear to finish correctly in captivity.
Photograph By Justin Mott/Redux
Megafish have a sacred status
Mekong giant catfish can grow over 600 pounds, and they had been as soon as ample, caught for meals and revered for his or her dimension. Thai fishers recorded annual catches in the a total lot in the early 1900s and later dozens. “I’d high-tail to take a bath in the river and catch a fish for dinner at the same time,” recalls seventy nine-year-extinct Boonrian Jinarat, who spent decades fishing in the city of Chiang Khong.
Nonetheless those days are long past. While no exact wild population numbers exist, Thailand hasn’t viewed wild catches in years. Today, a massive golden catfish statue stands downstream from Chiang Khong the place the giant fish as soon as swam—a monument to what’s been lost in the wild.
Recognizing the threats to the giant catfish, the Thai authorities launched a breeding program aimed at preservation in the early Eighties. The species, it turned out, adapted correctly to hatchery tactics, and populations steadily grew in authorities facilities.
Over time, these giants came across their way into private hands, with collectors, temple caretakers, and fish farmers raising giant catfish alongside other iconic species such as the giant barb, the arena’s largest carp, and the striking however rare seven-striped barb. “Their large dimension presents them a sacred status that is usually linked to spiritual beliefs,” says Chaiwut Grudpan, a fish biologist at Ubon Ratchathani University.
The fish also appeal to the nostalgia of some collectors. Sittitam Ruengcharungpong grew up in Bangkok surrounded by fish his father raised as a interest. Today, he breeds dragon fish and arapaima commercially however keeps several Thai megafish species in his two house ponds. “I want to grow them to full dimension, savor those I saw after I was younger, and be able to point to my teens how grand they can obtain,” he says.
This gold catfish statue at a Buddhist temple, identified as Wat Pla Buek, in the northern Thai town of Chiang Khong commemorates the Mekong giant.
Photograph By amnat, Almay
For Jirawat “Organ” Sangphoo, Thailand’s fascination with giant fish has become a thriving business. Out of doors Bangkok, he rents a conventional small farm the scale of a football discipline, the place he keeps a total lot of fish ranging from exotic imports to native megafish. His possibilities include private collectors, aquariums, and fishing parks, and business is steadily growing.
The most prized fish, he says, is the giant barb—also identified as the Siamese carp—a gradual-growing species native to the Mekong and Chao Phraya river basins that is broadly opinion to be a image of prosperity and factual ultimate fortune. “Organ” as soon as equipped a single specimen weighing 266 pounds (121 kilograms) to a fishing park for 1.7 million baht, or about $52,000. Given their value and the short time he handles them, he says, “I take care of the fish as in the occasion that they’re my pets.”
Avoiding a genetic bottleneck
Researchers first have to understand how many captive fish there are, the place they’re being stored, and how genetically diverse they are. Instruments savor environmental DNA may perhaps abet detect the presence of megafish in backyard ponds and fish farms. Hogan and his colleagues hope to track the origins of captive megafish and sample the gene pool beginning with a stare of Mekong giant catfish.
(Read more about scientists’ efforts to save the arena’s largest freshwater fish.)
An exact depend of Thailand’s captive population may not be that you can think of, however Hogan, who leads the Wonders of the Mekong research project, speculates there are more than a million Mekong giant catfish in captivity all via the country, at least a thousand times more than remain in the wild.
That staggering quantity exists largely because the Mekong giant catfish has confirmed so resilient in captivity.
