Surfing with the alien

As a kid, I was obsessed with the Loch Ness monster. I bought books with grainy shots of what looked to be the head of a plesiosaur rising up from the Scottish lake where “Nessie” supposedly dwelled. As a 12-year-old, I even wrote a two-volume science fiction story about the fabled sea serpent. So imagine my deflation when some Scottish git recently claimed to be the one who created the Nessie hoax by photographing a wooden model of a dinosaur floating in the waters decades ago. Bastard!

Fortunately, there are people out there who still believe in monsters. Jeremy Wade, for instance, does a good trade in tracking, hunting and sometimes debunking myths about modern-day freshwater beasties as host of Discovery Channel’s River Monsters, which premieres Aug. 10.

In River Monsters, Wade matches scientific research and fact with real-life stakeouts of monster lairs, whether in the Amazon, the Congo or Thailand’s waters. He presents a rugged figure, knife in hand, ready to do battle with the deadliest catch out there. The weird thing, as I learned during a Discovery press trip last year, is that Wade will often wrestle these things from the rivers — animals usually responsible for many gruesome local deaths — and then proceed to simply toss them back in the water again! Something about not upsetting the ecological order, I gather. Well, at least the public has been warned.

I got to submit some questions to Wade about the second season, which focuses on Southeast Asia. Truth is, these real-life monsters are actually way scarier than any benign plesiosaurs cruising Scottish lakes. (Turns out Wade is working on a book about Nessie. More on that later.)

What’s the premise of River Monsters?

JEREMY WADE: The idea in each program is it’s an investigation. It’s a detective story. It starts with something that we’ve heard. Now, we all know about fishermen’s stories; they are prone to exaggerate and make things up. While these stories sound like they shouldn’t be true, in the past I’ve found if you look behind some of these stories there often is a lot of truth.

How do you research these legends? Is it local lore? Scholarly study? How often does the reality match — or outweird — the legend?

The difficult thing is separating fact from fiction. I do this partly with my background as a biologist, a biology teacher. I talk to the scientists very often to find out what creatures might be there; what they’re capable of. I also was a fisherman, because my interest is very much fresh water rather than the sea. The reason I’m interested in fresh water is it is actually much more mysterious, I think. 

The only way, often, to find out what’s there is to put a fishing line in and see what hangs on the end. In a way these are detective stories; there’s a crime in the sense that somebody might have been killed or injured by something in the water. I then try and talk to witnesses; I’ll talk to expert witnesses in the form of scientists. I try and find out what the motive is — if there is something that’s attacked at us and why it has done that. 

So kind of like “Good Cop, Swamp Cop”?

Again, like a detective story I try and arrest or apprehend the suspect, and very often they don’t want to come quietly, which makes it a bit interesting. Then what I normally do, I let them go, which a lot of people like as well. I’m actually having a sort of hands-on encounter with these fish, some of which are potentially very dangerous. It’s not about killing them; it’s about looking at them alive and then letting them swim back into the river. 

This season of River Monsters opens with the giant freshwater stingray of Thailand. Have you dipped your toes in any Philippine waters?

Well, there are actually two programs in Southeast Asia, not the Philippines unfortunately, both in Thailand. We were looking into stories of a very big stingray in the rivers of Thailand, a species that was only described by science 20 years ago and lives very close to man.

The other fish I was looking into was snakehead, which originated in Southeast Asia and the American media (in Florida) has sort of gotten hold of stories about snakehead walking over land and biting people’s dogs in half and killing people… What was interesting was I was catching more snakeheads in Florida than I was in Southeast Asia. They really have taken off there. 

The Philippines is also known to have memorable monster lore — things like aswang (vampires), or the torso-less bat creatures called manananggal or the bakonawa, a deity in Philippine mythology often represented as a gigantic sea serpent. How do such beliefs develop and persist, and why?

I have generally found that a real creature is behind many of these stories and because stories about the underwater world are hard to disprove, these beliefs persist. Even in the modern world people need mystery in their lives.

Are there any legends you’re curious about here, and do you have any future plans to visit the Philippines?

I’ve not been to the Philippines, I’m afraid. It is somewhere that I’ve been interested in for a while. I don’t have any specific knowledge about river creatures there. We are always looking ahead, places that we haven’t been to and what other stories are there so if anybody does have any river stories from Philippines I would certainly be interested to hear them! It’s possible that I could be there.

Do you think global warming is disrupting global waters, causing prehistoric species to surface and possibly die?

I’m not sure that global warming is sort of yet affecting rivers. I think quite possibly that time will come, if we don’t do anything about it. I think it’s a very vulnerable habitat, much more so than the sea. The oceans are not in a very healthy state, rivers are even more vulnerable. Part of that is pollution, part of it is just overfishing and it’s very hard to know what the solution is here because places like the Congo, the Amazon, that’s an important food source for the people. Human fishing has had a huge impact. 

One thing that concerns me slightly is that River Monsters does give a slightly incorrect view of the world because in each program I go somewhere where I catch a big fish, but those are very much the exceptions. Most rivers in the world, if you go and try and find big fish you won’t find them. Obviously if you make a program about that, that’s not a very entertaining program where I go somewhere and I don’t find anything. Most rivers are actually in quite a bad way and I think we’ve really got to reconcile our interests with the interests of the other creatures that live here.

Does local assistance on the show help or hinder you from getting at the truth?

Generally speaking the local help is crucial. They are the people who have the real knowledge about how to get about, what lives in the river. Again, fishermen in particular — okay, they do spin these stories that sound very hard to believe, but I think sometimes if somebody really has seen something or does know something they can be a bit embarrassed. But I think, the fact that I’m a fisherman, they feel more comfortable maybe telling me something about a particular big fish or somebody being attacked, something like that. It is very much about working with the local people. 

And your final verdict on the Loch Ness Monster?

You will have to read my book! Which will be published next year.

D-oh! 

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River Monsters premieres on Discovery Channel Aug. 10, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. with repeats on Tuesdays 9 a.m., Thursdays 3 p.m., Saturdays 11 a.m. and Sundays 6 p.m.