In 2005, fishers in northern Thailand captured a Mekong giant catfish of gargantuan proportions. Tipping the scales at 293 kilograms (646 pounds), the critically endangered Pangasianodon gigas raised a question…
For Indigenous women in the Amazon, the wetland of Lake Tarapoto is a living classroom. The women consider it not just a home for the fish they rely on to…
This is the second article in a Mongabay series focused on changes to the ecology and hydrology of the Mekong River. Read Part One. Niwat Roykaew, an environmental activist based…
This is the first article in a Mongabay series focused on changes to the ecology and hydrology of the Mekong River. Read Part Two. The Mekong River carves a vast…
KISUMU, Kenya — It is a little past 5 p.m. at the lakeside city of Kisumu, in the western part of Kenya. An hour later, the sun sets over the…
DHAKA – Bangladesh has recently achieved remarkable success in freshwater fish production due to its fast-growing aquaculture, securing third place in global freshwater fish farming. The country produced more than…
KISUMU, Kenya — At Dunga Beach on the shores of Lake Victoria, numerous varieties of fish, such as tilapia, Nile perch and mudfish, are processed for consumption and distribution. Every…
PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Lithan, 68, grew up eating fish caught from the rivers and freshwater swamps near his village in Ogan Ilir district, near the southern tip of the island…
Encountering his first paiche was such a surprise for Víctor Peñaloza Lurici that he can still recall the event back in 2016. He was 16 years old at the time.…
This story was produced with the funding support of the Pulitzer Center. WEST TURKANA, KENYA—By late morning along Kaito beach on the western banks of Lake Turkana, the heat beating…
Considering the invasive nature of the species, Bangladesh has finally banned the cultivation, breeding, transportation, sale and conservation of suckermouth catfish (Hypostomus plecostomus), as it gradually encroaches on local water…
GATUNGA, Kenya — The dry spell that troubled Kenya for the past few years has shaken the country’s rural food systems. But Japheth Nthiga, a farmer from Karethani village in…
The indiscriminate use of gillnets by fishers in Bangladesh has become a major threat to the two freshwater dolphin species found there: the Ganga River dolphin (Platanista gangetica) and the…
VANCOUVER, Canada — Alongside the millions of Atlantic Salmon clustered in the open net pens that dot the waterways around Broughton Archipelago’s over 200 islands, sea lice, a tadpole-shaped parasite,…
Large hydropower dams that obstruct the Amazon basin have long come under fire for their environmental and cultural impact — Belo Monte being the most prominent example. Yet a bigger…
On an iron grill, six catfish are almost ready to eat. Hilda Rodríguez crouches to move the firewood and stoke the fire. She flips over the inguiris — green bananas…
The asprete, a ray-finned freshwater fish species that lives only in Romania, has long captured Mircea Marginean’s imagination. He remembers hearing about the species in 2011, when he was a…
Amid Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, a fish species considered extinct in the wild has been granted new life. Adorned in colorful costumes and marigolds, a parade of kids,…
The Halda River — the world’s only gene bank for pure Indian carp fishes such as ruhi (Labeo rohita), catla (Labeo catla), Mrigal (Cirrhinus cirrhosus) and Kalibaush (Labeo calbasu) —…
It may look like a nondescript silvery fish, but hilsa, or Tenualosa ilisha, accounts for an eighth of Bangladesh’s total fish catch, and more than 1% of the country’s economic…
DHAKA – Khalilur Rahman, 65, has been fishing in a tributary of the old Brahmaputra River in Kishoreganj for 50 years. Nowadays, he often returns home empty-handed. “The river has…
NDJI, Cameroon – Batchenga, 65 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, is slowly reopening. After serving as a ramp at the start of a national road linking the…
The July 2021 rupture of a tailings dam at a diamond mine in Angola killed off much of the aquatic life in the Lova, Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. Twelve people…
In 2006 and 2010, Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula collected catfish and other species from the rivers in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Then he hopped…
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic consumed humanity’s attention, our species ran through 4.5 trillion doses of myriad pharmaceuticals. In India alone, one drug, paracetamol — a pain reliever used to treat…
STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — A long-dormant plan to build a mega dam on the mainstream of the Mekong River in Cambodia’s northeastern Stung Treng province appears to have been revived…
SIEM PANG, Cambodia — “I remember seeing a buffalo, its head tied to a floating barrel, drifting down the river,” says Pheng Sisuwath, gesturing to the Sekong River from his…
BUJUMBURA — The squeal of passing bikes fills the air in the center of a newly created wetland on the outskirts of Burundi’s main city and largest urban settlement on…
CHHNOK TRU, Cambodia — From her sun-bleached wooden houseboat in the floating village of Koh Tapov, on the southeastern side of the Tonle Sap lake in Kampong Thom province, Hai…
PREK TABAEK, Cambodia — Bat Savoeun claims he has Prime Minister Hun Sen’s signoff to farm his 2 hectares of land in Prek Tabaek village, on the edge of the…