For as much as people think they know about the world’s rivers, the wildlife you can find there always manages to surprise us. Case in point: The world’s largest freshwater fish was found in the Mekong River in Cambodia. But scientists aren’t just excited about the find because of its massive size.
On Monday, Wonders of the Mekong, a joint Cambodia-U.S. research project, confirmed that a local fisherman south of Stung Treng in northeastern Cambodia caught a stingray weighing just under 660 pounds. To put that into perspective: The largest freshwater fish previously on record was a 646-pound Mekong catfish caught in Thailand in 2005.
