It's a big fish, yes; but it's not a catfish, much less a man-eater. Judging by the pictures, it is a whale shark, specimens of which have measured up to 41 feet long (or more, according to undocumented reports). It's the largest species of fish in existence and lives in salt water. Oh, and it eats nothing larger than plankton.
Albeit listed as "vulnerable to extinction" by conservation groups, whale sharks are subject to commercial fishing in parts of Asia, where their meat is sold for food and their fins for use in traditional medicine.
It's unknown precisely where and when these photos were taken, but the claim that the behemoth was caught in the Furong Reservoir in the Huadu district of China is clearly false, given that whale sharks are not freshwater fish. Nor, according to the government, have any "mysterious" drownings occurred in the reservoir over the past year. It would appear that the text accompanying these photos was entirely fabricated.
Interestingly enough, we have seen misidentified whale sharks wind up the subject of urban legends before.
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Sources and further reading:
Whale Shark
Florida Museum of Natural HistoryGiant Man-Eating Catfish Found in Guangdong Reservoir?
Shanghaiist, 11 August 2007
Last updated 04/20/12
