Bronze catfish
species of fish

The bronze catfish (Netuma bilineata), also known as the giant catfish, the roundsnout sea catfish, or the two-line sea catfish, is a species of catfish in the family Ariidae. It was described by Achille Valenciennes in 1840, originally under the genus Bagrus. It inhabits marine, brackish and freshwaters throughout the Indo-western Pacific. It reaches a maximum standard length of 62 cm (24 in).
The diet of the bronze catfish includes detritus such as loose scales and carcasses, as well as prawns and other crustaceans, and sea urchins.
The bronze catfish is of minor interest to commercial fisheries.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bronze catfish” is species of fish. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bronze, catfish and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1841144. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1840.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bronze catfish” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.