Stingrays are pretty common throughout the world, but I had no idea how big these things could get!
Scouring Thailand Rivers for Giant Stingrays
Rushing across a temple parking lot, British angler Rick Humphreys yells, "We've got a fish."
He jumps into a small motorboat on the Mae Klong River in time to see Wirat Moungnum bring the prize to the surface: a rare giant freshwater stingray
that weighs as much as 44 pounds.
*****SKIP*****
"It's a start," Humphreys says almost apologetically. The specimen is a tenth the size of the largest rays. "There are a lot bigger ones than
that."
Humphreys and his partner, Wuttichai Khuensuwan, have caught 40 rays on the Bang Pakong and Mae Klong Rivers, with the largest weighing in at 485
pounds.
*****SKIP*****
The next day, they have better luck on the Mae Klong.
The rod bends almost into the water, and Wirat struggles for almost half an hour as the ray dives under the boat and across the bow.
It finally is brought to the surface, revealing its big bulging eyes and dark, coarse skin. Its tail alone is 12 feet long.
I had no idea stingrays got this big! Manta/Devil Rays and some other types, but not Stingrays!
Hogan, 34, has heard the stories of Cambodian fishermen catching rays that weighed more than 1,100 pounds with wingspans of 14
feet. But so far they are just stories. If he can confirm them, his find could eclipse the world record now held by the Mekong giant catfish:
a 646-pound specimen caught in 2005 in Thailand.
"It could be the largest fish in the world and we know next to nothing about it," Hogan says. "I've spent five years on the Mekong looking
for rays and only saw two or three. They were nowhere near the size I'd heard about."
(by largest fish in the world, they mean
freshwater fish)
These rays are truly giants, monsters if you were in the water with them! It remains to be documented yet if they actually get up to 1,100 lbs., but
they may never get the chance to document one that big, this is one of the "vulnerable species" in the river due to pollution.
Hogan said he was drawn to the freshwater ray, known scientifically as Himantura chaophraya, because so little is known about it.
Listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, it is believed to be found in rivers from Thailand to northern
Australia. Scientists discovered it only 18 years ago, and its population is unknown.
[edit on 7/20/2008 by Keyhole]
