This is the seventh story in a continuing series on the Megafishes Project. Join National Geographic News on the trail with project leader Zeb Hogan as he tracks down the world's largest freshwater fishes.
When anglers called that March afternoon to say they had caught a giant freshwater stingray near this bustling Thai city, biologist Zeb Hogan couldn't believe it.
He had just spent a week in the remote Mekong River in northern Cambodia, searching for the ray—which might be the world's largest freshwater fish species—to no avail.
Hogan, of the University of Nevada in Reno, is documenting the rays as part of the Megafishes Project, an effort to document Earth's 20 or so freshwater giants.
Hogan is also a National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)
Many of these behemoths, including the giant stingray, have declined in recent years. The ray, listed as "vulnerable" on the 2007 World Conservation Union Red List of species, has been overfished in its Mekong River habitat, Hogan said.
But when Hogan arrived at the river that afternoon, he found that not only had the anglers reeled in a 14-foot-long (4.3-meter-long) ray, but that the creature had also just given birth to a dinner plate-size baby. (See photos of the new mother and baby.)
The newborn clung to the rough skin on the back of its mother, which was being held at the riverbank by nine handlers.
"Amazing," Hogan said. "A stingray this size giving birth before our eyes."
(See photos of the world's "monster" fishes.)
Megafish Title
The giant
