In early September, inspectors went down into the basement of apartment building No. 78 in the Muruvvat neighborhood of Fergana, in eastern Uzbekistan, and found a big framed pool stocked with fish that looked a lot like small sharks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Siamese sharks were striped catfish, Pangasianodon hypophthalmus, a Mekong River fish that Asian farms raise by the ton and that the IUCN Red List has classed as endangered in the wild since 2011. The owner ended up with fines, a 15-day order to clear out the basement and a public apology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The find was announced on September 4, 2026, by the Territorial Inspection for Control in the Sphere of Construction and Housing and Communal Services of Fergana region. The pool had been set up by one of the building’s residents, with a system to keep the water at the temperature the fish need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was fined under part 1 of Article 163 of Uzbekistan’s Code of Administrative Responsibility, the article on unauthorized connections to water supply networks. The penalty for that offense is 10 to 15 base calculation amounts, which works out to 4.4 million to 6.6 million som, and a second protocol was written up for the unauthorized use of drinking water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspectors gave him a written order to vacate the basement within 15 days and return it to its original condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, word spread on Uzbek social media that a real predatory shark lived under the apartments, a little like the dark shape in Chernobyl’s water that went viral as a mutant catfish<\/a>. Specialists from the Main Department of Ecology and Climate Change of Fergana Region went to the address, according to a statement from Uzbekistan’s National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their finding was that the resident, identified only as T.M., “in fact keeps not a shark, but a fish of the Siamese catfish species.” The committee added that the fish is kept in aquariums and that, because it looks like a shark, it is also known as a “shark-like catfish” or simply pangasius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n T.M. was quoted in the statement, translated here from Russian. “Unfortunately, inaccurate information spread on the internet that a shark was being kept in the basement of an apartment building. I apologize for the misunderstanding that arose. I have now moved the fish from the basement to the yard of my house.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the U.S., its common name is “iridescent shark,” according to an ecological risk screening summary from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a>, which also lists “tra, swai, striped catfish, sutchi catfish” as names and says it is “sold in the U.S. as swai.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Its whiskers give it away. Barbels are the feelers around a catfish’s mouth, and the federal summary notes that this species “has only two pairs of maxillary barbels (at the corner of the mouth).” It comes from “Southeast Asia; Mekong and Chao Phraya rivers and Maeklong basins.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The FWS file, quoting FishBase, gives a “max. published weight: 44.0 kg,” about 97 pounds, for a fish that can grow to 130 centimeters, or roughly 4.3 feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least two have turned up in American waters. “This species was reported in 1988 from a Florida creek that drains into the Hillsborough River near Tampa,” the file says, and “in 2017, a specimen was captured by commercial fisherman in the Illinois River near Naplate, Illinois.” On how they got there, it says “Unknown. Likely aquarium release as it is common in the trade.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither record seems to have led to a population, and their status is listed as “Unknown; likely failed.” Released fish have caused far more trouble elsewhere, as the invasive carp pulled from the Kansas River<\/a> show, and a 2001 report from Bangladesh quoted by the agency says that “among the introduced alien invasive species of fishes, Clarias gariepinus and Pangasius spp. are voracious eaters.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n FWS calls it “one of the most important aquaculture species in Thailand” and says it is “farmed widely as a food fish in Asia.” In the very next line comes the other half of the story: “Wild stocks have generally declined since the 1980s due to overexploitation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n A 2023 study led by Sothearith Soem of the Faculty of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the Royal University of Agriculture in Phnom Penh looked at Cambodia, where “the striped catfish was once a common catch and a dominant species in both the Tonle Sap floodplain and the Mekong River,” the authors write. In catch records from the dai, a stationary bag net fishery on the Tonle Sap River, its share “decreased from 0.16% in the 1998\/99 fishing season to only 0.01% in the 2017\/18 fishing season.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Changes in flood index (extent and duration of flood) in the Tonle Sap floodplain affected by the Mekong’s flow are likely key factors driving the decline of the wild populations of the striped catfish,” the team writes. “Both larval fish abundance and floodplain fish harvests have a significant positive relationship with Mekong flow and flood extent. Indiscriminate fishing exacerbates pressures on striped catfish stocks.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Big river catfish still make headlines far from Asia, like the nearly seven-foot catfish landed in France’s Sa\u00f4ne River<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither official account gives the number of fish, their size or where T.M. bought them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The researchers are open about their own gaps. The species “was assessed as ‘Endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) due to range contraction and declining abundance, though the status of the species’ wild population in Cambodia, a critical habitat for the species, is not well understood,” the study’s authors write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The FWS screening is just as careful about invasion risk, noting “uncertainty surrounding the impacts of introduction of P. hypophthalmus, with little evidence from wild populations to support expectations of negative impact. For these reasons, the certainty of this assessment is low.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The full study was published in Sustainability<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo: Vassil \/ Wikimedia Commons (CC0)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In early September, inspectors went down into the basement of apartment building No. 78 in the Muruvvat neighborhood of Fergana, … <\/p>\nWhy a catfish gets called a shark<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A pet store fish that grows to 97 pounds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Farmed everywhere and fading in the Mekong<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Scientists who have watched the river change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What the reports leave out<\/h2>\n\n\n\n