SAMUT SONGKRAM, Thailand – Rushing across a temple parking lot, British angler Rick Humphreys yells, “We've got a fish.”
Photo courtesy of Zeb Hogan, University of Nevada-Reno
U.S. biologist Zeb Hogan is shown with a captured giant stingray in the Mekong River near Kratie, Cambodia, in April.
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Humphreys jumps into a small motorboat on the Maeklong River in time to see Wirat Moungnum bring a rare, giant freshwater stingray that weighs as much as 44 pounds to the surface.
It bursts through the murky water exposing a soft, white underbelly the size of a trash can lid. The crew scrambles to string a rope through its gill-like slits and wrap a towel around its 5-foot-long tail that has a venomous barb.
“It's a start,” Humphreys says almost apologetically. The specimen is a tenth of the size of the largest rays. “There are a lot bigger ones than that.”
Humphreys is serving as a guide for U.S. biologist Zeb Hogan, who is on a worldwide quest for the largest freshwater fish.
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 Hogan can confirm them, he could eclipse the world record held by the Mekong giant catfish.
Hogan's quest is part of the Megafishes project financed by the National Geographic Society. The three-year project, which started in 2006, aims to document and protect freshwater giants that weigh at least 200 pounds or measure 6 feet long. The project will take Hogan to 14 freshwater systems on six continents, including the Mekong, Nile, Mississippi and Amazon rivers.
Time is running out for many of the species. The Chinese paddle fish and the dog-eating catfish in Southeast Asia are on the brink of extinction because of pollution, overfishing and dam building. In the Yangtze, where the Three Gorges Dam is a serious threat, Chinese paddle fish haven't been caught since 2003.
“Of the two dozen or so species of giant fish, about 70 percent are threatened with extinction,” said Hogan, an assistant research professor at the University of Nevada-Reno.
Hogan has focused mostly on Asia, where he once traveled 36 hours by road to catch the taimen in Mongolia. He just returned from Bhutan, where he scoured the river canyons for mahseer, which can be caught only by the country's monarch.
The freshwater ray, known scientifically as Himantura chaophraya, is 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 18 years ago, and its population is unknown.
Hogan spent the past few years on the Mekong in a futile effort to catch rays, because the nets of Cambodian fishermen were no match for them. Rays also are nearly impossible to spot, because they spend much of their time scrounging for small fish, shrimp, crabs and mollusks that live on the bottom of these muddy rivers.
A few months ago, Hogan got wind of big rays being caught and released by Humphreys' company FishSiam in Thailand. Unlike the Cambodian fishermen, FishSiam uses modern rods and reels used to catch other big game fish.
In the past year, Humphreys and his partner, Wuttichai Khuensuwan, have caught 40 rays on the Ban Pakong and Maeklong Rivers, the largest weighing in at 485 pounds.
Catching a ray can be dangerous, especially before its tail has been neutralized. “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray barb in 2006.
Wuttichai Kuachareonsri, a member of Humphreys' crew, stopped fishing for a year after he was stung in the leg by a ray barb.
“I never have felt pain like that,” Kuachareonsri said. “It really frightened me.”
