World's most iconic freshwater Indian fish on the brink of extinction: study

The paper published in the international research journal Endangered Species Research demonstrates that the endemic humpbacked Mahseer is now on the brink of extinction having been replaced by non-native relatives (blue-finned Mahseer) which have been artificially bred and introduced to the river in the name of species conservation, researchers said."As large monsoonal rivers are extremely difficult to survey, and angling was banned in all protected areas in India in 2012, I started to look for alternative data sources and discovered that the Galibore Fishing Camp(one of three former angling camps in the Karnataka jungle) had kept detailed angler catch records."This not only allowed us to analyse the temporal trends in population size over the previous 15 years but also form a detailed understanding of how the type and species of Mahseer had changed over time," Pinder added.