Weighing 300 kg.. Cambodian catches the largest freshwater fish in the world

A local fisherman has caught the world's largest freshwater fish on record, in the Mekong River in Cambodia, scientists from the Southeast Asian country and the United States have confirmed.

The giant "stingray" fish was about 4 meters long from head to tail and weighed just under 300 kilograms, surpassing the record for a giant catfish discovered in Thailand in 2005, which weighed 293 kilograms.

When a local fisherman found this fish, on June 13, in southern Stong Treng province, northeast Cambodia, he informed scientists at the Mekong Wonders Foundation, a Cambodian-American joint research project.

The foundation said in a statement, yesterday, that its scientists arrived in the area within hours of receiving the call after midnight, and "were amazed at what they saw."

The Mekong River runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and is home to several species of giant freshwater fish. But environmental pressures are rising, as scientists fear a dam-building program in recent years could seriously disrupt their spawning grounds.