It is unknown how many Mekong Giant Catfish there are in existense according to my soon to be released audio production on this topic.  I make reference to this blog post a couple of times in that audio, so I'm posting it in advance.

The audio is derived from two videos that I encountered.

The first video is produced by The National Geographic Society.  It details the adventures of Zeb Hogan, a World Wildlife Fund Researcher and National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer has been studying the Giant Catfish, using, get this, Laissez-fair exchange between the researchers and fishermen that were catching fish in direct contravention to Cambodian Law.  Yeah yeah, I know, Zeb's funding came from the WWF, who bashed our friends in the WWE over the head to enforce intellectual property, but that's beside the point.  And it's also nearly beside the point to say that the WWF get's it's funding largely by coercive taxation.

But I digress.

This from wikipeia's article on the Giant Catfish:

"Fishing for the Mekong giant catfish is illegal in the wild in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, but the bans appear to be ineffective, with the fish continuing to be caught in all three countries."

The second video, which in the audio I mistakenly attributed to a clean water organization, was furnished to vimeo by safecatfish.org.  I apologize for the errors.  The second video is meant to illustrate why catfish exported from the Mekong region are not safe to eat, but the environmental impact of the massive increase in human population and the changes in land and water uses can really explain why overfishing is not the only reason Mekong Giant Catfish stocks are on the decline.

Here are a few images of the giant catfish:

Here is an image of Zeb Hogan taking up the rear with a Giant Catfish while the guy in the background aspirates.

Here's another image of the fish in question, caught from a stocked lake by a tour-on:

Oh, and here's the book I was talking about in the audio

 The Art of Not Being Goverened:

An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia 

If you click on that link, it goes to a site I run, http://freedombookclub.com.  You can see that this book was considered by the club in February of 2010.  That is how long it has taken me to produce the audio.  Hey, what can I say!  I've been busy!

Now, finally, here is some of the artwork that was talked about by the National Geographic Society's narrator.  I couldn't get a good picture of the bas relief carvings shown in the video, so hear are some really really old cave paintings (notice the barbed wire set to protect the painting?)

I hope you enjoy the audio.  If you are cabal member, the audio is in the vault.  If you aren't, then you'll have to wait until Gard posts the audio on podomatic.