Article: Bigger cash carrot for Kenyir Monster

Wednesday July 22, 2009

By R.S.N. MURALI

HULU TERENGGANU: More cold hard cash may be offered to anglers who net the Kenyir Monster - Arapaima Gigas - alive before Aug 15.

The State Government is mulling the possibility of increasing the quantum of reward to almost three fold.

The current reward is RM10,000 for each of the freshwater species from South America that is caught and handed over to the state Fisheries Department to be relocated to Kemaman Zoo.

Sturdy net: Terengganu Fisheries Department staff using the 13" inch net to look for the giant fish during the operation in Kenyir Lake.

Terengganu Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said said the state government was contemplating to double or even triple the rewards, considering the complexity in netting such a gigantic fish.

"I was told that anglers from Europe and Australia were also interested to join the fray and we decided to make it more interesting by raising the stake," he told the StarMetro here, yesterday.

Asked whether the deadline would be extended, Ahmad said he would consider it when the time came.

"So far none had been successful in netting the fish, probably due to its size," he said.

The fish - dubbed the Kenyir Monster by locals here, created quite a stir after the death of two men on June 17 allegedly linked to the fish.

The possible existence of this fish in the biggest man-made lake in South-East Asia was reported in The Star the following day.

Based on findings by biologists, giant Arapaima Gigas is near extinct even in the Amazon River and its tributaries in South America.

The longest Arapaima Gigas sighted in the last two decades was slightly over two metres, whereas the Kenyir Monster is said to be about 4.5m.

In a related development, the state Fisheries Department launched a massive hunt for the giant fish in Kenyir yesterday.

Department director Abdul Munir Mohd Nawi said his men were working closely with National and Wildlife Department to tranquillise the fish when it was caught.

This, he said, had to be done due to its size.

He added that biologists from the department had laid traps to capture the fish.

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Metro: South & East 22 July 2009