Blue Catfish, ICTALURUS FURCATUS

Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter

from the March 19, 2008 Newsletter written in the community of 28 de Junio, in the Central Valley 8 kms west of Pujiltic, Chiapas, MÉXICO
about 800 meters in elevation, ± LAT. 16° 18'N, LONG. -92° 28'W.
FRESHWATER MARINE CATFISH?

As if finding crabs breeding in freshwater wasn't enough, last Tuesday Leuccio brought in a dead catfish he'd just found in a canal. That's it he's holding above.

*UPDATE: Years later the above fish was identified as the freshwater Blue Catfish, ICTALURUS FURCATUS, distributed from North America's Mississippi River drainage south along Mexico's Gulf Coast, to here, and beyond into Guatemala and Belize.

I carry with me the little Golden Guide called Fishes -- the world's fishes in 160 pocket-size pages. What's interesting about Leuccio's catfish is that the closest thing in the little Golden Guide to our canal catfish is one of the *Marine Catfishes, maybe genus Galeichthys.

But Marine Catfish live in saltwater, where I used to think all crabs did their breeding...