River Monsters (23 page)

But this super sense makes things difficult for shark anglers because metal leaders, crimps, and hooks create electrical micro-currents, thus advertising their presence in the water. In an
attempt to make his leader invisible to bull sharks, Terry was using PVC-coated wire rope as leader material, the thickness of washing line and with a breaking strain of 1,300 pounds for
bite-resistance. He also wrapped the hooks with plastic insulating tape, except for the very points, which he gave a final few strokes of the file before rigging the baits – a small touch
that marked Terry as somebody who knew what he was doing.

Bait rigging was equally meticulous, with cable ties holding the size 16/0 hooks firmly in position with their points well exposed. Meanwhile Ben was filling a large cloth bag with several
pounds of sand and tying it closed with a length of 40-pound mono, which was then tied to the swivel at the top end of the leader. Casting this assemblage of weighted metalware was of course out of
the question, so Terry now hopped into his kayak with the bait and sandbag and set off towards the brightly lit wharves, cranes, and moored ships on the other side. After a few moments we lost
sight of him, but the big reel continued to spin out line, about two hundred yards of it, until it went quiet and we saw a light flash out on the water. Then the reel’s clicker made a final
rasp as the sandbag plummeted to the bottom. As Terry returned, we slowly tightened the line, taking up the slack until the rod, vertical in its metal holder, took on a slight bend at the tip. Then
the drag was engaged, just enough to counter the push of water but no more, and the trap was set. After repeating the procedure with a second rod, we settled in to wait.

Above the drone of the mosquitoes, which continued to fly despite the breeze coming off the water, Terry told me how he’d nearly not landed his big shark. The line had become snagged on
the drop-off that runs parallel to the bank, and he had to wade out in the dark to free it. After hearing this, I was almost relieved when dawn arrived with the reels still silent. Terry and Ben
had to go to work, and they weren’t sure when they could manage another session. So in the meantime I decided to follow the river upstream, past the high-rises of the city centre and the
southwestern suburbs to Kookaburra Park, some fifty miles away as the shark swims. Here I trundled into a small car park and walked a short distance over grass to a steep bank. I baited with dead
sprat and didn’t have long to wait before something snatched at the line. But nothing else happened, and I eventually retrieved to find a bare hook. This happened a few more times before I
finally connected, only to find that the culprit was a foot-long catfish. My next trip was the same story. Then some local anglers told me the secret: live mullet at night. They also said that some
people eat the small sharks from here because they’re tastier than sharks from the sea. This squares with sharks in fresh water having lower urea levels (which in a dead shark is broken down
by bacteria to form ammonia), so I judged their bait tip to be reliable.

Getting the mullet was a mission in itself. First, I had to master the art of throw-net fishing, a method I’d steered clear of until now. I’d had a couple of lessons from Amazon
fishermen, who hold part of the lead-weighted margin in their teeth and release this by opening their mouths at the correct moment. It’s all about timing, said my toothless instructors. But
the Australian method, I was pleased to discover, doesn’t involve teeth, although otherwise it’s very similar, particularly the novice’s tendency to land the net in a tightly
knotted clump. Eventually I got the hang of it and returned to Kookaburra Park with excellent bait and a feeling of anticipation.

The water here is still tidal, rising and falling a good few feet. I arrived at dusk, some hours before high tide, which I’d heard is when there’s the greatest chance. But rather
than wait, I lip-hooked a small mullet and swung it out on a running lead. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t expecting anything to happen and wasn’t mentally in hunting mode that the
spool was suddenly whining. I picked up the rod and tightened the line – not a sweeping strike, as I was using a circle hook – and immediately knew this was a shark. Its reaction on the
line was different from any fish I’d caught before: dashing in all directions seemingly at once, including straight towards me, when I struggled to maintain contact. I took some time to get
the initiative; then it was a case of judging when to grab it. If I left it too long, it would have a hard time recovering; if I tried too soon, it might still be too much of a handful.

I was using a short, one hundred–pound wire leader and eighty-pound braided line, which was amply strong enough to ease the shark on to the shelving mud, where I grabbed it behind the head
with one hand and then ran with it up to the grass. I could feel its body tense and flex – a different feel from other fish, possibly because of its different anatomy: the more flexible
skeleton made from cartilage not bone and the muscles attaching to the inside of the thick skin, which forms a kind of exoskeleton. It was about ten pounds and thirty inches long. But even though I
had it in my hands, it still seemed so incongruous: a shark from a river, about the width of the Thames at Henley, and not that different looking either.

But how much further up did they go? I’d heard a story about a thousand-pound racehorse that had been attacked in the water another thirty miles upstream, and I was curious to know the
details. The horse’s trainer, Alan Treadwell, witnessed the incident while he was swimming the horse back and forth across the river as part of its training programme. Alan had bought the
horse at a bargain price because of an injury that had supposedly finished the horse’s career. But Alan’s novel training methods had given it a new lease of life, and it had started
winning again. On this day, March 23, 2005, Alan as usual attached a half-inch rope to the horse’s halter and then kept abreast of it as it swam by walking along the footway of the road
bridge above. The horse was nearly halfway across when, for no apparent reason, it started to flail and sink. ‘The horse looks like it’s going to drown,’ said Alan. ‘All of
a sudden I saw something hanging off the back of him. As the horse rolled over, the colour lightened, and it went to white underneath, whatever it was.’

Alan ran to the shore and, together with his stable hand, heaved the horse out of the eleven-foot-deep hole below the bridge. ‘If we hadn’t got him out, I don’t think he would
have survived,’ he said.

From the vet’s photographs, I saw that the horse had a single crescent-shaped cut on his right flank, with five or six broad tooth marks visible, together with parallel scratches about an
inch apart, as if made by teeth that had skidded across the flat hide and failed to penetrate. When I showed the picture to Vic Peddemors, who heads shark research for the New South Wales state
government, he declared it was definitely a shark bite. From the orientation of the wound, which ran vertically not horizontally, it appeared that the shark must have turned partially on its side
when it attacked, and just the broad-based serrated teeth of the upper jaw, rather than both sets, had penetrated.

From the gentle curvature of the wound, Vic deduced that the front teeth of quite a large shark had inflicted it, but the shark had been unable to take a bigger mouthful because of the
horse’s bulk. This tallies perfectly with what we know about bull shark physiology: that larger ones cope more easily in fresh water than small ones. And this was totally fresh water, as I
had verified with a salinity meter. But Vic was then visibly shocked when he compared the tooth spacing with a bull shark jaw in his collection and found an almost perfect match. His reference jaws
came from a fish nine feet long.

It seemed an open-and-shut case, apart from one thing. Five miles down from this bridge is Mount Crosby weir, a twelve-foot step in the river’s water level and a barrier that would block
the way upstream to any fish. Maybe something else was responsible, something that can circumvent weirs. The only other large aquatic predator in Australian waters is the saltwater crocodile.
However, the official limit of the saltie’s range is some three hundred miles north, although isolated individuals have been reported well south of this in the past. But then again,
crocodiles have to breathe air and haul out of the water to warm their bodies, so you’d expect to hear of other sightings.

Things didn’t add up. But then came a piece of information that solved the puzzle. Over the years the Brisbane River has occasionally burst its banks. The biggest recent flood before that
of 2011 was in 1974, when archive photos show the water below Mount Crosby weir at the same level as it is above. Information about shark lifespan is incomplete, but the FishBase website quotes
thirty-two years for bull sharks. So it’s conceivable that a juvenile swam upstream in the floods and has been there ever since – and very likely not just one.

You can’t help wondering what might have happened to a human, a fraction of a horse’s size, if they’d gone swimming there that day. This isn’t just idle speculation. This
place is a popular swimming hole, right next to the road with a convenient parking lot, deep water next to a clean bank, and a bridge from which the more adventurous can jump. And when I was there
in early 2009, four years after the attack, there was a total absence of any warning notices.

Sharks are an emotive subject. Unlike most of the other predators in this book, they claim victims from the developed world, people with verifiable names, grieving families, and backgrounds
similar to our own. When this programme aired, it was one of the few that prompted negative comment. I received a couple of e-mails accusing me of demonising sharks. Why draw attention to these
attacks? Sharks get bad enough press anyway, they said. A couple of others asked why I returned the sharks I caught to the river if they might potentially attack people. Surely this was
irresponsible. Both of these views miss the point.

Yes, the stereotypical image of sharks is indeed incorrect. They are not the ruthless exterminators of popular imagination – but neither are they benign and cuddly. Some sharks do attack
and kill people. Ignoring this fact won’t make it go away. In fact, ignoring it will help to ensure that it continues to happen, which will help to keep alive the ignorant anti-shark
mentality that these would-be conservationists claim to be fighting. People are right to be afraid of sharks. What’s important is what they do with this fear, which brings us to the second
objection.

Killing what you are afraid of is not the answer. In fact, as my next bull shark encounter would make very clear, trying to do so may even make matters worse. No, the answer lies in
understanding the predator – not in some wishy-washy, metaphorical head-patting sense, but instead in terms of its biology, why it does what it does. Then we can adapt our behaviour
accordingly. In the case of bull sharks, not everybody knows that they can come into fresh water. For most of us this is academic, but for those living in the risk areas, this could be a matter of
life and death. If bull sharks are present in significant numbers, then humans should not get into the water, particularly between dusk and dawn when bull sharks tend to be most active. Another
wise precaution, in the bull shark’s range, is not to swim in river mouths, especially after rain, which flushes extra food into the water.

It’s a question of being informed and taking basic precautions. Shark ‘attacks’ are actually very rare – some seventy to one hundred worldwide each year, of which only
about ten are fatal. But there still remains a random element. Just before I left Australia, a navy diver lost a hand and a leg to a nine-foot bull shark in Sydney Harbour.

Meanwhile, back at Luggage Point for a few more night sessions, my baits stayed untouched by these predators. I did hook something, though, in a part of the river that had recently been dredged.
But the back-breaking weight felt strangely inert. Terry and Ben ran down the mud beach with flashlights to see what was on the line, and their reaction, on the filmed recording of the event, was a
series of electronic bleeps. With its cavernous, diver-swallowing mouth (so they say) and crest of nail-like spines down its back, it needed all three of us to lift it – and even more of an
effort to take it in mentally. It was a six-foot giant grouper (
Epinephelus lanceolatus
), or as they call it here, a Queensland groper, normally an inhabitant of reefs and the last thing
anyone would expect to find here.

In some ways I was disappointed that it wasn’t a shark, but then it occurred to me that this fish, with its angry stare and mosaic flanks, was, in its own way, an answer: a graphic
embodiment of the unexpected. But nowhere near as unexpected as the behaviour of the next bull sharks I encountered.

12

THE WISH YOU WERE DEAD FISH