Would You Believe a Chinese Sturgeon Large as a Minibus?
BEIJING — A fishy tale about a monster sturgeon the size of a minibus caught in China’s Yangtze River has turned out to be a hoax.
A red-faced Chinese official Friday admitted that the story carried by China’s state Xinhua news agency Thursday was nothing more than a fisherman’s tale.
Xinhua reported that a 100-year-old female sturgeon weighing 1,100 pounds and 17 feet in length was netted Monday by researchers at the China Sturgeon Artificial Reproduction Institute in Wuhan.
That is about double the size of the biggest freshwater fish recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
On Friday, the institute’s Communist Party secretary, Zhu Dahuang, confessed the truth.
“It’s a hoax,” he said.
The Guinness Book of Records currently lists the catfish-like Pa Bleuk as being the biggest freshwater fish. One specimen caught in Thailand was 9.8 feet long and weighed 533 pounds.
The Chinese sturgeon, like the Giant Panda, is a protected species in China and is known as a “living fossil” because it is seen as an evolutionary throw-back.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
