Critically Endangered
Mekong giant catfish
Pangasianodon gigas
Mekong giant catfish is a ray-finned fish in the family Pangasiidae (order Siluriformes) — Pangasianodon gigas, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to China, Cambodia, and Laos.
Appearance
Grey to white in color and lacking stripes, the Mekong giant catfish is distinguished from other large catfish species in the river by the near-total lack of barbels and the absence of teeth.
Young Mekong catfish do exhibit barbels and oral teeth, but these features diminish as they age and are absent by the time they grow to be 30–50 cm in length. Attaining a length of up to 3 m (9.8 ft), the Mekong giant catfish grows extremely quickly, reaching a mass of 150 to 200 kg (330 to 440 lb) in only six years.
Range and habitat
The Mekong giant catfish is a threatened species in the Mekong, and conservationists have focused on it as a flagship species to promote conservation on the river. Historically, the fish's natural range reached from the lower Mekong in Vietnam (above the tidally influenced brackish water of the river's delta) all the way to the northern reaches of the river in the Yunnan Province of China, spanning almost the entire 4,800 km (3,000 mi) length of the river. Due to threats, this species no longer inhabits the majority of its original habitat.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
After about one year, the fish becomes herbivorous, feeding on filamentous algae, probably ingesting larvae and periphyton accidentally. The Mekong giant catfish are toothless herbivores that live off of the plants and algae in the river.
Understanding of the species' migration pattern is incomplete. The fish are thought to rear primarily in the Mekong and Cambodia's Tonlé Sap lake and migrate hundreds of miles north to spawning grounds in Thailand. Spawning fish in the upper Cambodia are being over-harvested.
In crisis
It is considered critically endangered due to overfishing and habitat loss. Endemic to the lower half of the Mekong River, this catfish is in danger of extinction due to overfishing, as well as the decrease in water quality due to development and upstream damming. The current IUCN Red List for fishes classes the species as critically endangered. The number living in the wild is unknown, but catch data indicate the population has fallen by 80% in the last 14 years.
In recognition of the threat to the species, though, nearly 60 Thai fishermen agreed to stop catching the endangered catfish in June 2006, to mark the 60th anniversary of Bhumibol Adulyadej's ascension to the throne of Thailand. Fragmentation caused by dams increasingly poses threats to larval fish.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Mekong giant catfish is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Mekong giant catfish, Wikidata item Q739380. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
