River or lake, India
The Ganges
India's great river, home of the wild Indian major carps, the goonch, the chital and the rare Ganges shark.
The Ganges flows about 2,500 km from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, through the most populous river basin on Earth. Its wild carps, rohu, catla and mrigal, gave rise to India's fish farming, and their spawn was once collected from its floods to stock ponds. It holds a wide range of fish, from the golden mahseer in its Himalayan headwaters to catfish, featherbacks and, near the delta, the critically endangered Ganges shark.
A river of carps
In the monsoon the Ganges floods wide plains, and the major carps spawn in the shallow, warm floodwaters. For generations fishers in Bihar and Bengal collected the floating eggs and fry with fine nets and sold them to pond farmers. Francis Hamilton described many of the river's fish in 1822 in his account of the fishes of the Ganges, and many species still bear the names he gave. The goonch, a huge catfish, and the wallago hunt in the deeper channels.
Dams, pollution and the catch
Catches of carps from the river have fallen over decades. Barrages divert water for irrigation, the Farakka Barrage cut the hilsa run, and sewage and industrial waste foul long stretches. Sand mining destroys spawning beds. The Namami Gange programme, launched in 2014, funds sewage treatment and river ranching, the release of hatchery-bred carp fingerlings into the river. Scientists at the Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute in Barrackpore monitor the river's fish.
Fish of The Ganges
Still to be written: Catla, Cirrhinus mrigala, Bagarius yarrelli, Chitala chitala, Wallago attu, Ganges shark.