Can Angling Tourism improve the prospects of some of Thailands endangered fish species?
Harvesting river fish has been a vital food source for large sections of the Thai population over many hundreds, if not thousands of years. Sadly with growing populations, and ever more effective methods for catching fish over the generations, many of Thailand’s wild fish stocks have been depleted to such an extent that they are now under grave threat of extinction, indeed fishing villages on the Mekong have also declined in line with lower and lower catch rates, suggesting that most of the rivers inhabitants have declined to very low levels. Added pressure has been brought to bear on migratory species such as the Mekong Giant Catfish as a result of some of Thailand’s largest rivers being dammed for power generation, and water supply, leaving migratory routes and access to spawning grounds blocked. Less is known about movements of the Giant Siamese Carp in the wild except that the capture of large adult specimens is now becoming extremely rare throughout South-east Asia, it’s likely in
