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Science

Texas man caught what could be a record-setting fish, but he set it free

The fish may be up to 100 years old.

Payton Moore/YouTube

Payton Moore stands over the 8-foot, 300-pound alligator gar he caught and released.

Buckle up for the most amazing story of "catch and release" you've ever heard. Payton Moore, a resident of Sugar Land, Texas, set out to the Houston bayou and decided to catch himself a fish. And catch himself a fish he did. Moore filmed a video of himself catching an approximately 300-pound alligator gar, and let me tell you, it's a sight to see.

Moore's catch of the alligator gar was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, as there aren't many left. It's clear that Moore understands the monumental moment, and as much as it could have proven historical, he did the most humane thing he could have: He set the behemoth free.


When Peyton Moore went out on the bayou, it was with the intention of trying to catch an alligator gar. The video opens with him in a tussle with something at the end of his fishing wire. It's clear that this is no ordinary fish. Moore has his work cut out for him if he thinks he's going to be able to actually reel the thing in.

Initially thinking he hit some sort of snag, he quickly realizes that it is in fact, a gar. "This is a huge fish," he says, pulling the fishing rod. "I thought we were stuck in a tree, but we're not. We're on something enormous."

He understandably spends the next few minutes tussling with this "enormous" fish without knowing just how big it is. At that point, it was still too far out for him to see, so he was trying to navigate it through the water by instinct.

"It felt like somebody's car had just started up and was rolling out of the driveway," Moore told the Houston Chronicle.

For much of the video, the fish is far enough below the water that you can't even see it. When Moore points or talks about the fish's location, you just have to assume he knows what he talks about. Eventually, he does begin to bring it closer to the shore, but the war is not yet won. Remember, it's a big fish, wrangling it isn't going to be easy.

"They're big, they're strong, they're heavy, and they give you everything they got, right away," Moore explained.

Knowing this, he figured there was only one solution: He was going to have to tire the big fish out if he wanted any chance of catching it. There were some blocks in the water, including a downed tree, so Moore had to be careful, especially because at the time, he didn't know how big the fish was.

After letting it swim in small circles to tire itself out, Moore was finally able to get a rope around the fish and pull it out of the water. You can see by the look on his face that this is not the alligator gar he was expecting. He measures it and announces that it's 8 feet, 2 inches long. Based on its girth, Moore estimates that it's around 300 pounds.

In 2011, Kenny Williams from Mississippi managed to catch a 327-pound alligator gar that measured 8 feet, 5.25 inches, with a 47.95-inch girth, according to Outdoor Life. Moore opted not to wait to have this gar measured, setting it free instead. After releasing the massive fish, Moore is overcome by emotions at what he just witnessed.

"It's an incredible animal to witness...they're rare. There was a time where fish like that roamed these waters literally at the same time as you had apex predators like Tyrannosaurus rex roaming on land," Moore added.

Watch:

I Caught The BIGGEST FISH You've Ever Seen! (300lb MONSTER!)

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Why one explorer wants to reconnect people of color to nature.

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Nature Valley

Rue Mapp can still remember the moment she fell in love with the great outdoors.

"I grew up in an outdoor loving family," recalls Mapp over the phone. "We had a ranch in Northern California."

Rue Mapp. All photos courtesy of Outdoor Afro.

Mapp's early days were spent walking those California country roads and hopping over to nearby farms filled with grazing cows and pigs. As her love for nature expanded, Rue began to explore more and more remote areas, traveling deeper and further into the incredible landscapes America has to offer.

Then, she noticed that not many people of color were doing the same, and she decided to do something about it.

Rue started Outdoor Afro — a nonprofit network built to connect the African-American community to nature and inspire outdoor leadership.

Initially a barebones blog, Outdoor Afro is now an organization of over 24,000 people in 30 states. They organize hikes, camping trips, cookouts, bike tours, and even outdoor dance parties. "There was a group in D.C. that did outdoor DJing," says Mapp. "So there’s a lot of creativity and expansion of what outdoors looks like."

"It wasn’t really about whether or not black people and people of color were getting outside," says Mapp. "It really came down to how we were."

Black communities use their local parks as much as anyone else, says Mapp. It's when you travel out to remote trails or into major national parks that you see a noticeable drop in diversity. She thinks this has everything to do with accessibility.

"Unless you’re in the know, you won’t know that you have to call into Yosemite a year in advance to get the prime spot, right? So there’s something about the proximity and the accessibility that helps people know how to get to those places, how to use those places."

Outdoor Afro started working directly with public parks to help ease that gap in communication and accessibility for more communities.

"We’re able to be a kind of entry point for people to see and experience places both near and far and really lower the barriers," says Mapp.

While she's always loved her work, it was recent political events that truly solidified Mapp's mission.

After the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Outdoor Afro set up "healing hikes."

"We hiked into the redwood basin and went along the stream trail," recalls Mapp. "I just realized we were doing what African-Americans have always known we could do and that is to take our burdens and lay them down by the riverside."

The 2016 election also helped Outdoor Afro focus on their mission.

"It helped us double down on joy," recalls Mapp. "Black joy specifically... We absolutely need to find joy again and hold that joy for one another because we’re in this together."

As Outdoor Afro continues to grow, so does its scope.

They now have 65 outdoor leaders who embark on vigorous excursions, like hiking Mt. Whitney, summiting Kilimanjaro, and taking a couple hundred mile bike ride along the Buffalo Soldiers trail. "It's not all kumbaya," says Mapp.

Outdoor Afro is not only built on the power of nature, but the power of community. It's mission is to help people realize they're not alone and there's a big, beautiful world out there.

Nature, she says, doesn’t hold all of these "-isms" over your head.

"When you go out in nature, it’s really the ultimate equalizer," says Mapp. "It doesn’t discriminate, it frees us of the judgment that we put on each other. The trees don’t know what color you are ... the birds don’t know how much money you have in your account. The fish don’t know your gender."

It's a small thing, but maybe one small step into nature can be a giant leap toward healing our divides.

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How 2 cousins saved their family's oyster company with underwater farming.

True
Gates Foundation: The Story of Food

When Ryan and Travis Croxton decided to bring back their grandfather's oyster company, it coincided with Chesapeake Bay’s lowest oyster harvest ever.

All images via Upworthy.

Their town's once-flourishing industry was collapsing. In fact, things got so bad, their native oyster was almost put on the endangered species list. It was a pretty big dilemma (and inconvenient timing), to say the least. But it only spurred the Croxton cousins' Rappahannock Oyster Company even more to find a solution.

They scoured the internet to see what other countries were doing, how they were producing their seafood. What they found was a more advanced, efficient technique that could help save not just their own business, but Chesapeake Bay's entire oyster industry.

Watch how this amazing journey unfolded right here:

This community of dedicated fishermen is making sure the Chesapeake Bay oyster doesn't end up on the endangered species list.

Posted by Upworthy Video on Friday, March 17, 2017

Rather than just gathering what oysters were left, the Croxtons turned to aquaculture, which is basically the farming and harvesting of anything that lives underwater.

Outside of aquaculture, gathering fish and oysters is just about that — gathering. Get, get, get. Fish, fish, fish. You collect as big a bounty as you can and you sell it for top dollar. The problem with that model is it becomes all about how much you can get, leaving little regard for resources.

In contrast, aquaculture is all about those resources. It focuses oncreating a sustainable ecosystem where underwater plants and animals can thrive more naturally.

And when it comes down to it, oyster aquaculture can be a boon to both the environment and the economy.

For one thing, oysters are a natural cleaner and they act as an amazing filter for pollutants, such as nitrogen. "During its duration in the water, it's filtering 50 to 60 gallons of water a day," explained Ryan Croxton.

Promoting a habitat and life cycle that allows these oysters to blossom benefits Mother Nature (and our tummies) even more. "The oysters we grow actually increase the population of the wild oysters," added Travis Croxton. "You see underwater vegetation coming back, which provides sanctuary for marine animals."

When it comes to aquaculture and fish, however, the method does have potential downsides. Installing cages to farm the fish is necessary, and building them can damage a coast's natural ecosystem. On top of that, waste can accumulate in these structures and contaminate an area's water supply.

Aquaculture also has the potential to create countless new jobs. In the U.S. alone, aquaculture production hit just over a billion dollars back in 2012. But when you compare it to the $120 billion worldwide industry that it was valued at that same year, you can see there are still many opportunities for growth.

And it's already happening.

When the the Croxtons first started out, only a few businesses were doing aquaculture in their community. Now? Several hundred. "I've increased my workforce by about 30%," said Richard Harding, owner of Purcell’s Seafood Company. "We're a small business in a small community, so every job counts."

The best part? Aquaculture has the potential to improve food access for people all around the world.

A 2015 report by WorldFish shows how fish consumption is rising in developing nations — and future demand worldwide is only expected to increase in the coming decades. This means that aquaculture is going to play a pivotal role in making sure that everyone gets fed.

In fact, by 2030, it's already estimated that two-thirds of the global fish supply will be produced via aquaculture.

So yes, demand, populations, challenges — they're all rising. But, you know what? So is the know-how of the people addressing this issue. "Aquaculture is one of the rare things in this world that is a win-win for everything," added Travis Croxton.

The next time you grab an oyster platter, think about how that little gooey organism is helping change the world. Then, of course, think about how dang delicious it is.

Heroes

The Soviet Union literally destroyed the Aral Sea. This nation's going to bring it back.

We thought the Aral Sea was dead.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

Located between modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea was once one of the world's largest freshwater lakes.

But starting in the 1960s, the Soviet Union began rerouting rivers away from the sea and into giant agricultural projects. Starved of incoming water, the Aral began to evaporate and disappear, leaving behind briny pools and a ghostly, polluted desert.

By 2007, the lake was just one-tenth of its former size. Former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

But now the sea — at least a little part of it — is coming back to life.

In 2005, Kazakhstan built a massive dam, Dike Kokaral, around one of the Aral's few remaining pockets of water, a lake that's come to be known as the North Aral Sea.

Now, rather than disappearing into the vast desert, incoming river water has stayed and pooled. Over time, the water level has risen, and freshwater fish that had been driven off by lower waters and rising salt levels returned.

And with the fish came fishermen.

For two weeks, French photographer Didier Bizet traveled to the North Aral Sea to see how the water's return had affected the region's towns and cities. This is what he saw.

In the morning, fishermen from the town of Tastubek drive out to the (now vastly closer) coast.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

The water used to be about 50 miles (80 km) away, according to Al Jazeera. Now the ride's only about 12 miles (20 km).

A lot of people from the village are fishermen, including 23-year-old Omirserik Ibragimov.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

Ibragimov works with his friend Kanat. The fishermen usually work in pairs and use small, rusty boats.

When he's not working, this fisherman stores his boat's engine in his car. Nobody's likely to steal it, but it's too expensive to risk losing. Photo from Didier Bizet.

Outside the North Aral Sea, the vast majority of the former lake is still desert.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

Local guide Serik Dyussenbayev says this particular patch of land used to be under about four meters (about 13 feet) of water. The ground, contaminated with Soviet-era pesticides, is dotted with thousands of sea shells.

Skeletal boats still dot the area.

This ship lies about 30 kilometers from Tastubek. There used to be more, but they were cut up for scrap. Photo from Didier Bizet.

But the fish prove that, at least in the North Aral, the dam is working.

In Tastubek, fish are sorted, washed, and frozen. Photo from Didier Bizet.

Factories in Tastubek and the nearby city of Aralsk sort, clean, and freeze the fish, which are then shipped all over the region, even into Russia and Uzbekistan.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

In Aralsk, fish shops have returned.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

The shops in Aralsk offer catfish, perch, pike perch, bream, snakehead, and three different kinds of carp.

Decorations at the Rara café hint at how close the water used to be to Aralsk — and maybe how close it could be again.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

A second phase of the dam project could raise waters even more, bringing the sea to Aralsk and other former ports again.

The Aral Sea is still one of the world's greatest environmental disasters. We shouldn't ignore that, but recovery is possible.

It's important to understand that the North Aral Sea is only a small part of the former lake and just returning the water won't solve every problem. Any long-lasting recovery could take decades.

Here, things are starting to look good again.

The fishermen head home at the end of the day. Photo from Didier Bizet.

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