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MOTH-Simeonov — wels catfish
Published: 2011-08-20 16:36:45 +0000 UTC; Views: 6562; Favourites: 42; Downloads: 840
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wels catfishgraphite on paper A4
(sorry for a bad photo soon i will try to get better)
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Comments: 28
I would love to catch one for myself. i would have to tie myself to a tree to do so though. the largest Wels can grow as big as 16 feet, or so say evidence that continues to mount up.
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No, this claims about such sizes are nothing but big-fish-stories. The largest real specimens grew "only" to around 2,8 m.
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so you say. the fact is we don't know how big they potentially grow. there are individual Goonch catfish in the Kali river that are somewhere around 10 feet long from eating remains from funeral pires and dragging domestic buffalo and humans to their deaths. wels also cannibalize their own, so they could be getting fat on their smaller kin, and there are reports of Vundu catfish growing to 12 feet in some regions in Africa.
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Sorry, but it´s sometimes just better to stay realistic. In the case of the alleged giant wels, the claimed lengths and weight don´t fit with each other at all, what´s a typical trait of big-fish-stories. And furthermore, among all confirmed specimens, even the very biggest ones are not even full 3 m in length. So it make just more sense to accept that in many cases the biggest claims are not real but made-up. I´ve been researching this particular topic since nearly a decade, and you can believe me there is just NO reason to think that wels can grow bigger than 3 m. There is always a biological limit of sizes, and there are areas where wels have perfect conditions year around, and even there lengths of more than "only" 2,5 m are exceptional. In general wels aren´t cannibals. Small wels are more prone to cannibalism, but in contrast to pikes for example, bigger specimen rarely eat their own kin, but prefer smaller preyfish.
There are also no 10 feet long goonch. You are refering the River Monster episode. But actually they also didn´t find any goonch of 10 feet (or was it 2,5 m I think?), and they were only refering to somebody who told them he has seen one of this size. But this was in quite murky water, and it was only partly visible, so this was only a vague estimation, and people nearly always overestimate big animals in the water. I don´t doubt there are some quite large goonch out there, and they grow without doubt to lengths of more than 2 m, but it´s a huge difference between 7 and 10 feet. I also strongly doubt the report of the alleged attacks on water buffols. River Monsters is a great series, but sometimes they are really way too sensationalistic. And I also doubt that some goonch just grow to exceptional sizes due to burned human corpses, as there are similar sized specimens known from many other areas of their distribution.
I wouldn´t take the reports of 12 feet vundu catfish for serious. There are also reports of blue catfish in the US which are claimed to be the size of great white sharks. Sometimes reports are nothing but tell-tales. Vundu catfish are big, but they rarely exceed even 1,5 m, and if they would reach 12 feet, confirmed specimens at least close to this size would be known.
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i'm really thinking you are right about the wells, but i do still believe there are indeed 3 meter goonch out there. if an individual Bagarius yarelli was to feed on funeral pyre remains, as well as its normal food, i would think that would substantially fuel its growth, though to what degree i do not know. Other fisherman too (such as Jacob Wagner), have started investigating the Goonch's appetite for human flesh as well, and they are finding similar consistencies. The extended version of that same River Monsters episode also revealed something else; that 6 foot goonch that Jeremy Wade caught was not the biggest he had on. what seems to be an even larger one took the bait and was strong enough that it snapped the line before he managed to hook the six-foot adult.
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Yes, but you have to keep in mind what huge difference is between 2 m and 3 m. That´s a length differnce of 50% what results in more than 3 times the weight. To reach such a size, you need more than only some additional food. I think there is a chance that some specimens could be around 2,5 m, but more seems unrealistic. Just take a look at the south american Piraiba Brachyplatysoma filamentosum. This species has similar proportions as the goonch, but grows larger on average, and there are much more giant specimens known. But even for this species which has now a confirmed maximum weight of more than 200 kg, no lengths really bigger than 2,5 m were ever confirmed.
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true. very true. i have to agree with you there. i also believe that some of these large fish could be very long lived. just a theory, but in places too cold or deep for crocodiles and caimans, goonch and piraiba could live for longer than other individuals of their species elsewhere to a moderate extent. what do you think? does that sound feasible.
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Both goonch and piraibas prefer comparably warm water. Goonch also live in some more mountainous areas which are probably colder, but in general warmer climates are better for good growth. For this reason the largest wels come all from southern Europe, where they were introduced but formerly not present. It´s a quite common erroneous believe that giant specimens of cold blooded animals have to be quite old. Of course very large animals are often already moderately old, but they don´t have to be very old. Genetics and good overall conditions like food abundance are much more important than age, because most of the growth is attained during the early years. Wels for example gain only quite little additional length when they are old, and become mainly stockier.
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good point. very good point i must admit.
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Nice to see that you agree. Of course giant specimens of catfish, no matter if they are wels, piraibas, goonch or jaus for example have normally next to no natural predators (except very large crocodylians where they occur), so they can of course often live long enough to grow to their individual biological limits. But in general old animals don´t grow much more, actually it´s often the case very old and already unhealthy specimens even loose weight.
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i would have agree with you there. only sturgeon seem to not apply to that rule, considering the giants i've seen in recent news articles such as the nearly 12 foot, 1,100 pound female caught in the Fraser River estimated to be at least 100 years old, and the pregnant 15 foot, 1360 pound Kaluga sturgeon that was caught in the Heilongjiang River by researchers for their breeding program.
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Yes, sturgeons are extremely long-lived, and the largest ones are in general old females. Given the fact that at least some species probably can exceed 150 years, it´s not surprising that they really gain size during a very long time. However, genetics and food-availability are also important for record sizes. Next to all sturgeon populations are highly overfished, so there is no more natural age pattern existent. Sturgeons are well studied in aquaculture, and food quality and availability and also temperature can have a big impact on growth. Beluga sturgeons can reach a length of more than 1,5 m in a few years, but in later years their growth is much slower.
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oh yes. sturgeon growth slows when they get big, and there are some probably in lake Iliamna in Alaska that grow very big because of the abundance of food there and the lack of overfishing there. the Fraser river giant was estimated to have been at least 100 years of age and presumed to have never been caught before.
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It´s really a shame that so many sturgeons are so highly overfished, and some species even quite close to extinction.
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it sure is. i find it pathetic that they would kill such a magnificent animal just for its bland tasting, overpriced eggs. no one should ever eat caviar.
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Well, today there are several aquaculture projects which breed sturgeons for caviar, and I think that´s ok.
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better to breed them than downright kill them. now if only they could do that with Beluga and Kaluga.
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There are actually successfull efforts to breed at least belugs in captivity.
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that is very good news to me! now they just need to put back the same restrictions that the Soviet Union had to save the species.
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It´s really hard to believe that only around one century ago, there were even several sturgeon species living in Germany, even Beluga Sturgeons.
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Really? i thought Belugas only lived in the Black and Caspian Seas.
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Yes, that´s true indeed. But they swim up rivers like the Danube, and in earlier times they even reached Germany. At earlier times, Huso huso even populated parts of the northern Adriatic Sea and the Sea of Azov. There were also other species of sturgeons in some german areas of the river Danube like sterlets and waxdicks. From the North Sea and Baltic Sea European sea sturgeons did swim up rivers like the Elbe from the North, and there were even some atlantic sturgeons from North America which came from the Baltic Sea, and hybridized with European sea sturgeons. Those atlantic sturgeons had only a quite short-lived era, they came around 800-1200 years ago during a time with higher average temperatures, but they were not quite successful in etablishing a realy breeding population, but produced only hybrdis between female atlantic sturgeons and male European sea sturgeon.
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now that is very cool. i would have loved to have seen the variety in those times. it would have been amazing.
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I am not sure if there was any significiant difference.
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the ecosystems were much healthier then to a certain extent.
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Speaking of belugas, anyone else pissed they are apex predators and bigger than great whites yet not recognized as the largest modern (including recently extinct) non-tetrapod predator?
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