Beyond National Borders: Important Mekong River Medium Sized Migratory Carps (Cyprinidae) and Fisheries in Laos and Cambodia

Abstract

Many types of fish migrate up and down the Mekong River, and back and forth between the Mekong and her tributaries, adapting within a river system characterised by extreme sea-sonal flow variations. This paper summarises six-years of fisheries catch-effort data regarding the artisinal dry season 4-9 cm meshed mono-filament set gill net fishery in the Mekong River just below the Khone Falls in Southern Laos, on the border with Cambodia, which targets important me-dium-sized migratory cyprinid carps, including Mekongina erythrospila, Scaphognathops bandanensis, Labeo erythropterus, Bangana behri, Hypsibarbus malcolmi and Cirrhinus molitorella. The suspected migratory patterns of the main species in the fishery are described. The possibility that changes in annual catches in southern Laos are associated with the operation of bag net fisheries at the mouths of streams in northeast Cambodia is considered. The man-agement of these straddling fish stocks, which seasonally migrate between the Mekong River in Cambodia and Laos and the Sekong, Sesan and Srepok Rivers in northeast Cambodia and southern Laos, needs to be addressed through the cooperative efforts of both countries. As a first step, joint committees of village fisher representatives and government officials from Cambodia and Laos need to begin exchanging information and discussing fisheries manage-ment issues.