Megafishes Project to Size Up Real "Loch Ness Monsters"
The three-year project aims to document the world's largest freshwater fishes, from giant catfish to half-ton stingrays. First in a new series on megafishes.
A thick, polluting haze envelops the Three Gorges Dam, blurring the view of the world's largest hydroelectric station.
But for Zeb Hogan, a fisheries biologist with the University of Reno, in Nevada, seeing the 1.5-mile-wide (2.5-kilometer-wide) dam from the banks of the Yangtze River brings into sharp focus the threats facing the animals he has set out to study: the world's largest freshwater fishes.
"From the point of view of the fish, there's nothing worse than a dam," he said.
"Dams block upstream migration, destroy spawning habitat, and can turn large stretches of river into ecological wastelands."
Earlier this year Hogan launched the Megafishes Project, a three-year effort funded by the National Geographic Society to document the 20-some species of giant fish found around
