River Monsters (43 page)

igfa.org
(International Game Fish Association) The IGFA’s ‘all-tackle’ records are now public on their website. However, this is not a definitive big-fish
list because it includes only rod-caught specimens from the last eighty years or so, and not all ‘record’-sized captures are submitted.

iucnredlist.org
(The International Union for Conservation of Nature ‘Red List’ of Threatened Species) According to the IUCN, ‘The freshwater system
represents the most threatened of all ecosystems.’

jeremywade.co.uk
Information on upcoming programmes and so forth.

msc.org
(Marine Stewardship Council) Guidelines on how to eat fish with a clear conscience from certified sustainable sources.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My twenty-five years of mostly solo travel have been aided by too many people to mention individually, principally the fishermen of the rivers I have visited. My more recent
involvement in filming has been very much a team effort. Kieron Humphrey was the producer at Carlton TV in London who first saw the possibilities of a documentary about an outlandish Amazonian fish
and who touted the idea for over two years. Leonie Hutchinson was the commissioning editor at Discovery Europe who finally made
Jungle Hooks
a reality, and Gavin Searle was the director who
put me through the mill in the making of it. Wildlife filmmaker Lucy d’Auvergne first recognised the potential interest of fish mystery stories to a wider audience, and Harry Marshall at Icon
Films in Bristol made these a reality, together with Charlie Foley at Animal Planet. For the subsequent making of these programmes, my thanks go to the following: Directors/producers: Lucy
d’Auvergne, Duncan Chard, Steve Gooder, Doug Hope, Charlotte Jones, Alex Parkinson, Barny Revill, and Luke Wiles. Camera: James Bickersteth, Mark Chandler, Robin Cox, Duncan Fairs, Brendan
McGinty, Rory McGuinness, Rick Rosenthal, Robin Smith, and Simon Wagen. Other crew/support: Poppy Chandler, Holly Cue, Natalie Dunmore, Claire Efergan, Bryce Grunden, Joseph Hassell, Dan Huertas,
Lorne Kramer, Andrea Lawther, Becky Lee, Sam Mansfield, Che McGuinness, Dean Miller, Belinda Partridge, Nia Roberts, Robin Shaw, Chris Stitchman, Racquel Toniolo, Solange Welch, Erica Wilson, and
Abi Wrigley. Editors: Rama Bowley, Darren Flaxstone, Thomas Kelpie, Matt Meech, Glenn Rainton, Sam Rogers, and James Taggart. Executives: Andie Clare, Laura Marshall, and Lucy Middelboe (Icon
Films); Brian Eley, Mick Kaczorowski, Marjorie Kaplan, Jamie Linn, Lisa Bosak Lucas, and Kevin Tao Mohs (Animal Planet); Richard Life (ITV Studios Global Entertainment); Jo Clinton Davis, Diane
Howie, and Katy Thorogood (ITV); and Bethan Corney (Five). For the safe delivery of this book I am indebted to my agent Julian Alexander, Scott Hoffman and Erin Niumata at Folio Literary
Management, and my editors Rowland White at Orion and Renée Sedliar at Da Capo. My thanks, too, to the K. Blundell Trust, administered by the Society of Authors, which provided a grant
towards one of my early Amazon research trips. Finally, special gratitude goes to Tim Marks, John Petchey, Martin Wade, and the late David Bird.

PHOTO CREDITS

Sawback lake monster © Jeremy Wade / ardea.com.

Jeremy Wade with car © Graeme Whiting.

Jeremy Wade with carp © Jeremy Wade.

Jeremy Wade with a fifty-eight-pound mahseer © Jeremy Wade, by Bola.

Zaire riverboat © Jeremy Wade.

Zaire village children with tigerfish © Jeremy Wade.

People’s Republic of Congo, fisher boys © Jeremy Wade.

Rio Purus storm © Jeremy Wade.

Rio Purus aerial view © Jeremy Wade.

First Amazon expedition, 1993 © Martin Wade.

Jeremy Wade with bent rod © Martin Wade.

José fishing on Lago Grande © Martin Wade.

Butchered arapaima © Jeremy Wade.

Amazon fishing canoes © Jeremy Wade.

Harpooned arapaima © Jeremy Wade.

Jeremy Wade with arapaima © Jeremy Wade, by Gavin Searle.

Amazon plane crash revisited © Jeremy Wade, by Gavin Searle

Goonch © Icon Films, by James Bickersteth.

Goonch underwater © Icon Films, by Rick Rosenthal.

Cuiu-cuiu © Icon Films, by Barny Revill.

Piraiba © Icon Films, by Barny Revill.

Sawfish © Icon Films, by Poppy Chandler.

Alligator gar © Icon Films, by James Bickersteth.

Queensland grouper © Icon Films, by James Bickersteth.

Daybreak on the Brisbane River © Icon Films, by James Bickersteth.

The Djoué Rapids, Congo River © Icon Films, by James Bickersteth.

Goliath tigerfish close-up © Icon Films, by Dan Huertas.

Goliath tigerfish © Icon Films, by Dan Huertas.

Five-hundred-pound bull shark © Icon Films, by Natalie Dunmore.

Half-eaten kob © Icon Films, by Duncan Chard.

Electric eel © Icon Films, by Alex Parkinson.

Stingray © Icon Films, by Dan Huertas.

Longfin eel © Icon Films, by Dan Huertas.

Jeremy Wade has a BSc in zoology from Bristol University and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) from the University of Kent. He has worked
as a secondary science teacher, a newspaper reporter, and a senior advertising copywriter. He has written for publications including
The Times
,
Guardian
,
Sunday Telegraph
, and
BBC Wildlife
magazine. His previous book,
Somewhere Down the Crazy River
(with Paul Boote), was published in 1992 to stellar reviews. Prior to
River Monsters
, Jeremy made two
documentary series for Discovery Europe:
Jungle Hooks
(2002, set in the Amazon) and
Jungle Hooks India
(2005), both since shown worldwide. He lives in southern England.

See www.jeremywade.co.uk for details of upcoming series and other news.

List of Illustrations

1.
THE AMAZON LAKE MONSTER
that nobody believed was real, including me – until I took this picture. This is the reason I don’t automatically dismiss other
fishermen’s tales.

2.
IN MY EARLY TWENTIES
I was an obsessive carp angler, escaping whenever possible to camp beside English lakes.

3.
THERE’S MORE TO
some fish than meets the eye. Carp have powerful teeth in the back of the throat that would crush a finger just as soon as a snail shell.

4.
A FIFTY-EIGHTPOUND MAHSEER
, which dragged me down rapids on the Kaveri River in South India on my thirtieth birthday. Local handline fishermen have been nearly
drowned.

5.
IN ZAIRE
(now Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1985, I travelled on one of the legendary giant riverboats – with two thousand other passengers, uncounted stowaways
and secret policemen, and trussed live crocodiles.

6.
ZAIRE VILLAGE CHILDREN
show me a standard-issue, striped (not goliath) tigerfish. Its feared larger cousin, they told me, can almost bite a person in half.

7.
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CONGO
, 1990. When I took this picture I was incubating a near-fatal dose of malaria.

8.
BATTLING WITH SOMETHING
that grabbed a ten-inch piranha. Something about that compact eruption tells me it’s not made by a normal fish.

9.
FIRST AMAZON EXPEDITION
, 1993. Fishing from the island on Lago Grande. Plank-built canoes are precarious in bad weather.

10.
MY FIRST TEACHER
of Amazon jungle-craft. Hard-as-nails José fishing with gillnets on Lago Grande.

11.
BECAUSE OF THEIR GREAT WEIGHT
, fishermen butcher arapaima at the lakeside. Mostly you just see their huge, kipperlike fillets.

12.
FISHERMEN SELLING THEIR CATCH
on the waterfront at Manaus. The amount of commercial fishing in the Amazon truly shocked me.

13.
IN MOST OF BRAZIL
, fishing for arapaima is now banned, but river people have few other sources of cash. The man on the left became a bodyguard for the town mayor and
was wounded by shrapnel in an assassination attempt.

14.
THE LAST-GASP ARAPAIMA
caught on my
Jungle Hooks
shoot, using neither rod nor reel. From painful experience I know this fish can be very dangerous indeed, but in
an unexpected way.

15.
REVISITING THE SCENE
of my Amazon plane crash. Only weeks later did I realise how close I’d come to dying.

16.
THE FISH THAT HIMALAYAN VILLAGERS
say is a man-eater. My capture of this 161-pound goonch, after plunging after it into monsoon floodwater, gave weight to their
stories.

17.
BREATH-HOLD DIVING IN UNDERWATER CAVES
in a cold, cloudy Himalayan river with trailing poachers’ lines was not my idea of fun. But we did, eventually, get the
first-ever footage of goonch in their natural habitat.

18.
THIS
CUIU-CUIU
OR ‘RIPSAW CATFISH’
was a rare catch. But this armour didn’t stop a piranha from taking a mouthful out of its back on the way to
the boat.

19.
THE BUSINESS END OF A PIRAIBA
, one of two catfish species that Amazon fishermen say have swallowed people whole.

20.
WITH A CHAINSAW-LIKE SNOUT
on a shark's body, sawfish require careful handling.

21.
LIKE AN ALLIGATOR WITH FINS
. But is the much-maligned alligator gar as dangerous as it looks? And how reliable are the reports of fourteen-footers?

22.
GIANT GROUPERS
have been known to attack divers by grabbing arms, legs, and even once, a man’s head. But this 250-pounder from a river surprised even local
fishery experts.

23.
BLEARY-EYED DAYBREAK ON THE BRISBANE RIVER
. Not such a good time for darkness-loving bull sharks, but at least you can tell if that’s an oil tanker you just
hooked.

24.
AT NINE FEET, EIGHT INCHES
long and weighing five hundred pounds, this is one of the biggest male bull sharks (note the ‘clasper’) ever seen anywhere. What
was it doing in a river?

25.
A BULL SHARK
made short work of this leg-sized kob in South Africa’s Breede River. They also check out people – but why aren’t the Breede sharks
man-eaters?

26.
THIS FISH HAS SMALL TEETH
and very little muscle, but touch it and you could die. Hence the protective clothing.

27.
GET STABBED BY THIS SPINE
, with its coating of toxic slime, and the pain is like holding your foot in a fire. Death can follow from gangrene or blood loss.

28.
CAUGHT WITH A LINE BUT NO HOOK
, the longfin eel is an unlikely man-eater – until you piece together its grisly
modus operandi
.

29.
THE TWO THOUSAND–MILE RIO PURUS
was my second home for nearly ten years. On its way to join the Amazon, the Purus is a confusion of bends and hidden backwater
lakes. Annual floods raise the water level by up to fifty feet.

30.
THE DJOUÉ RAPIDS
, where the Congo River squeezes down to just 1,200 yards. Further downstream it’s 350 yards. Surely an insane place to cast a line.

31.
‘HE CRIED IN A WHISPER
at some image, at some vision . . . “The horror! The horror!”’ (Joseph Conrad,
Heart of Darkness
, 1902).

32.
THE FISH THAT TOOK TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
to catch.

Illustrations