River Monsters (2009) s03e01 Episode Script

Papua New Guinea.
A land renowned for cannibalism, macabre rituals, head-hunters and bitter tribal conflict.
But now something new is ripping through the heart of this island.
Argh! A creature that is tearing chunks from unsuspecting fishermen, devouring certain body parts.
My name is Jeremy Wade, biologist and extreme fisherman.
I've spent my life searching for freshwater monsters.
Ah, those teeth! I'm heading to Papua New Guinea to find out what has acquired the taste for one particular part of the human body.
Details about the attacks are unclear.
All I have to go on are a few sketchy reports from newspapers and the internet.
The incidents first surfaced in the Australian press, which reported two separate but very similar fatal attacks in the Sepik River in the remote Northern region of Papua New Guinea.
Patrick Mo had just returned from a long day on the water.
He was bathing in the river margins right in front of his house when it struck.
He was hit by a powerful lone hunter.
A fast swimmer with jaws like a vice that ripped and tore his flesh.
Mo had a certain body part bitten off as a result of which he bled to death.
The second attack was eerily similar.
Francis Sambin went to the river to wash dishes and cool off.
Something he had done countless times before.
But this time, it was to be very different.
This time he would not be going home.
I've tracked freshwater killers all over the world, but this is my first visit to Papua New Guinea, which lies north of Australia, where the Coral Sea meets the South Pacific.
It is one of the most dramatic and untouched islands anywhere on Earth.
Despite more than 50,000 years of human habitation, this landscape has changed little since prehistoric times.
Much remains unexplored.
New species are regularly discovered.
So is the river killer a new arrival, or has it been hiding away for centuries? It is only now that I begin to realise the sheer size of this island and the remoteness of the area where I'm heading.
There's just an awful lot of forest out there.
I'm used to flying over forests in the Amazon but this is very different.
While the Amazon tends to be very flat, here we're talking serious mountains, and just completely cloaked in greenery.
And the other thing is, in the Amazon, if you look carefully, you can see buildings down there, you can see tin roofs occasionally glinting back at you, and clearings in the trees.
But here, just none of that at all.
It appears to be completely uninhabited down there.
These steep-sided mountains and impenetrable forests led to isolation and diversity among its plants and animals and suspicion and bitter tribal conflict between its people.
Tribal fighting still exists in the less accessible mountain regions.
But right now, it is the water level that concerns me.
We're now approaching the flood plain of the Sepik River.
And there's a lot of water there.
I mean, this is supposed to be now into the dry season but I'm still seeing lots of water, not just confined in the banks of the river but spreading throughout the landscape and the fish and everything else in the water are going to be very spread out.
And it's going to make my job pretty difficult.
Rising in the central mountains, the Sepik River snakes for over 700 miles through impenetrable forest.
This is one of the last great unexplored rivers.
It is to Papua New Guinea what the Congo is to Africa, and the Amazon is to South America.
After four flights, 48 hours and 9,000 miles, I arrive in Ambunti, in the remote north-west corner of the country.
I've never been here before, so I'm not too sure what I'm getting into.
There's no roads here.
So er I think the stuff's coming out of the plane now, and then it's onto the water.
My base for the next two weeks is a village deep in the heart of the forest.
These tribes are cut off from the outside world.
The only way in or out is along this river.
Little has changed here for centuries.
Their culture is rich in superstition, myths and mystery.
And they are notoriously wary of outsiders.
I'm met by one of the elders.
I sent word of my intended visit many months ago.
Turning up unannounced is not taken kindly.
I do my best to smile and look friendly.
But I'm not getting much reaction.
- So, this spirit house? - Yes.
Spirit house.
This was once the site of human sacrifice and even cannibalism.
Now, it is the place of worship and ceremony, and where outsiders are called when they visit.
But I'm not too sure how welcome I am.
I've erm been hearing stories about something in the water attacking people.
Is this something that you know anything about? Yes.
So what What is happening? There are over 700 languages in Papua New Guinea, but the trade language common to all is Pidgin.
They also understand a little English.
The thing about Pidgin is that there are English words that are recognisable and in the middle of that was Ball-cutter.
There's something in the water called a ball-cutter.
And this does agree very much with the stories that I've heard.
People have been coming out of the water with injured genitals.
It's interesting that the first place I've asked, "Yes, yes, we know about this, there is something dangerous in the water.
" So these injuries, people being attacked, is this something that has happened here? So it sounds like it's something they've heard about here but nobody here has actually been attacked, or at least not yet anyway? They're saying the stories, coupled with the name of this animal, the ball-cutter, it is something that they are afraid of and very worried about.
Particularly mothers are very concerned that their children are careful in the water.
For villagers living here, avoiding the river is virtually impossible.
Their lives revolve around it.
Now, somewhere down there, is a creature with teeth sharp enough to emasculate a man, causing him to bleed to death in minutes.
Just resting up after the journey here.
It's 48 hours nonstop travelling to get here.
But first impressions, actually not good - this is an awful lot of water.
There is an annual flood here but the water should be well on the way down.
The problem is, the last wet season was the most rain they've seen in about 30 years.
And the problem with this is that when the water is up, it spreads into the forest and the fish are just so spread out, it's very hard to find them.
In fact, if this was the Amazon, I'd just consider it a lost cause really, so finding the fish in all this water is going to be quite a challenge.
I've investigated similar incidents before.
Fish on! Look at that! In Central Africa, I caught a Goliath Tigerfish, a species that has attacked and killed people in the Congo River.
What we've got to worry about now is it biting its way out.
But that is 9,000 miles away and Goliaths are not found around here.
The village elders told me that none of the native fish species would be capable of inflicting such horrific injuries.
But something out there is responsible for these fierce attacks and I've no idea what it could be.
I've not been here before, so I don't know what fish I'm likely to catch.
But what I'll probably do is start off light, a light line, little hook and a small bit of bait and try and catch some small fish.
That'll give me, or start to give me a picture of what's down there.
And then what I'll do, I'll try and move on to fish further up the food chain that are feeding on those little fish.
And to catch the predators, I've got a selection of artificial lures which resemble small fish, but I might also just put a bit of dead fish on my line.
I've got some bigger hooks for that.
And because predators are very likely to have teeth, I've got some wire as well.
So basically, I've just got a bag of bits so I'll make it up as I go along but starting with the small ones and gradually working my way up the food chain.
The Sepik River does not have the same species-richness that other great rivers have.
This basin only became a freshwater system around 6,000 years ago, following the northward movement of the Australian continental shelf, a fall in sea level and a build-up of sediment.
There's one catfish here, I notice.
Here we go.
But the others are Sort of standard issue small scaly fish.
Actually, that's interesting.
That looks like a tilapia.
It might even be a tilapia.
That is a fish that has been moved around a lot, keeps turning up in parts of the world where it never used to exist.
That would be interesting.
Hey! A big one! Can I hold? The usual catfishy type, sort of raspy pads in there, not really teeth as such but that's for grasping small fish.
Looking at this, the dentition on this, although it's going to be quite a frightening sight if you're a small fish, I don't think this is going to harm a person if it gets hold of a bit of you.
It might give you a bit of a rasp but it's not really going to cut you.
So it's a decent sized fish but I think this is not the animal that's responsible for these attacks.
Thank you very much.
I've not been able to find out exactly where the attacks took place but I do know they occurred close to a village.
So that is where I begin.
Bit of coconut as bait.
The villagers have told me that the fish around here find coconut irresistible.
I'm fishing right in front of the houses.
Two reasons, really.
Fish often come very close to where people are, simply because that's where people wash their dishes, all that kind of thing.
Also, shallow water fish, contrary to popular belief, tend to be found very often in the shallows rather than the deep.
There's more light, therefore more vegetation, therefore more food.
And in no time at all, I get a bite.
Just, as it's unfamiliar, I'm keeping an eye No, there's no spines or anything there.
There we go.
That's an interesting fish.
And just have a little look in the mouth.
Yeah, there are small, small, small teeth in there.
Nothing that's going to do any damage to anybody though.
Oh! Now that's interesting, cos that shot out of my hands then.
It's very slippery.
That's actually putting me in mind of a fish that lives in the Amazon, a thing called a Triera, which is quite similar to this.
It is very strange.
You come to an unfamiliar place, you pull out fish that look a bit like something that you recognise - there's a flash of recognition - but when you look closely, it's not quite right.
It's a bit different.
So this has got teeth but they're very small teeth.
This fish isn't going to do any damage to anybody but, I don't know, if these things got significantly bigger, say three or four feet, then that might be a candidate.
I hold it in the water to make sure it is fully recovered before I release it.
Ooh! That's taken line off the clutch.
Strong, strong fish.
Oh! Let's have a look.
Something's actually That didn't break the line - I wasn't putting that much pressure on that.
No, that has actually cut it.
Something down there has cut the line.
That's interesting.
I was fishing close to the side and there's something down there with teeth.
What's interesting, though, it actually took a bit of coconut, so you've got a vegetarian with teeth.
My first piece of evidence.
And now I've received word there's an attack victim in a nearby village.
Could this be the clue I need? Ramsin Tero was attacked while paddling his canoe but his attacker wasn't a fish, it was a 20ft crocodile.
So what happened was that Ramsin was collecting palm fronds for roofing his house.
And the first thing he knows is that a crocodile has actually come from underneath.
He didn't see the body of the croc, but it came along and just crunched one end of the boat.
The size of the crocodile's jaws were the length of his arm.
He said he could have put his arm right down its throat, that was the size of it.
He climbed the tree at this point and the crocodile then pulled the canoe away.
At this point, he actually starts praying.
He realises this could be, potentially, a fatal situation.
But then what happens is the crocodile realises that the boat isn't edible or for some reason leaves it alone, drifts off to one side and, at that point, he's thinking, "Well, how do I get out of this?" Ramsin sat it out in the tree until the croc eventually lost interest.
Actually, he was able to very carefully reach the canoe with his spear, which is floating in the water, so he was able to escape on the broken boat.
He was lucky.
Over the years, dozens of people have been killed by crocodiles in the Sepik River.
This skin came from a 20ft monster said to have learned to flip over canoes.
Sepik River crocodiles certainly have a history of killing, but are they the ball-cutter I'm looking for? The elders told me they doubt the native fish species here are capable of inflicting these injuries, but something did bite through my line, so I have to keep an open mind.
I head out with Alphonse Mava Samye, a fisherman and crocodile specialist, to see if somehow a crocodile could be responsible for these unusual mutilations.
He has brought me to the same area where Ramsin was attacked.
Alphonse is actually going to try and call this crocodile to us.
The splashing mimics the sound of a large crocodile moving quickly through the water.
The call, that of a young one.
Both sounds should attract crocodiles to us.
Ramsin described the croc that attacked him as being over 20ft long but they kill by ripping and spinning, tearing at flesh and devouring huge chunks at a time so it is unlikely that a large croc would only attack the genitals.
But could it be a smaller one or is something else lurking down there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
See the eyes just on the edge of this bit of vegetation here about 20, 30 yards in front of the boat now? Perfect crocodile habitat.
It's right in the vegetation.
They can stay submerged for over an hour.
You don't know they're there until they attack.
Each time we spot one, it spooks and disappears.
They seem very wary.
But eventually Alphonse grabs a baby one.
So this one's a salty? So this could belong to the big one? This could be one of the children.
One of the children for the big one.
So the squeaking noise, what is the squeaking noise? - Is it really? - Yeah.
So you think it may be a good idea to put it back? Yeah, yeah.
Put it back.
I can't be certain that crocs are not responsible for the attacks, but Alphonse tells me that they're rarely seen near villages now and both the genital attacks occurred close to the victims' houses.
I think something else in this water has a taste for human flesh.
We saw one crocodile tonight, I suppose an animal 8ft or 10ft, something like that, judging by the amount of light coming back from the eyes, but other than that, it's just been small ones and I suppose, in one sense, a bit of relief not to come across the big one, but in another sense, um, I'm quite disappointed and also surprised that we haven't seen more crocodiles tonight.
Alphonse tells me that in recent years, crocodile numbers are down and it is only in the past few years that the attacks on people have occurred.
Could it be that whatever is attacking the fishermen is also attacking the crocodiles? The next morning, I set up again at the edge of the village.
I'm on the Sepik River in a remote part of Papua New Guinea 9,000 miles from home on the trail of a creature that is attacking unsuspecting fishermen.
Blimey! Strong, strong fish.
I can hardly believe my eyes when I see what is on the end of my line.
Oh! Looks like a piranha.
It has got teeth, but they're not piranha teeth.
Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like a fish I know from the Amazon called a pacu.
The thing that gives it away is the teeth.
They're not cutting teeth, they are grinding teeth.
I actually had my line cut a few days ago by a mystery fish here in the lakeside.
Actually, seeing this now, I think this is what it could be.
Although they're grinding teeth, they have got quite sharp ridges on and I think this is what it could have been.
Unlike a piranha, these teeth are not designed for slicing through flesh.
They are primarily vegetarian.
They feed on things like nuts that fall in the water.
So a very interesting catch, but I don't think this is actually the fish that I'm after.
What's it doing here? The pacu is typically found on the other side of the world in South America and doesn't belong in the Sepik.
Puzzled, I meet up with Alphonse again.
I just wondered if you can tell me what this fish is doing here.
What, you say produce, it was put here? So this is a new fish to give people something else to eat? Yeah, yeah.
I've investigated introduced species before and know the devastating impact they can have on a river.
It's absolutely stiff with fish.
In the US, silver carp escaped from a fish farm.
Their numbers exploded and they now dominate entire stretches of the Illinois River.
I actually feel the boat being buffeted as they're banging into it.
The wels catfish was moved from the cold rivers of Northern Europe to the warm, rich waters of Spain, where they grew into monsters.
With no natural predators and ample food, both species have run amok, upsetting the natural balance.
So could something like this now be happening in the Sepik River? Word of my quest is spreading through the nearby villages.
I've been told of a fisherman named Nick Sakat who was savaged by something in the river which wasn't a crocodile.
Then what you saw, the size of the bite, - that was also similar to human teeth, wasn't it? - Yes.
- So it looks like a person has bitten your foot.
- Yes, yes.
What are you thinking is down in the water? Whatever is down there is not only fast and ferocious, it's also powerful.
The village elders told me that there were only a handful of fish species out there, none of them capable of carrying out such an attack.
I head out further from the village, along smaller tributaries.
There has been so little exploration out here that new species are regularly discovered.
Could it be that something unknown to science is responsible for these attacks? There's something in the water attacking people, so I'm fishing to see if there's anything predatory down there.
I'm putting a lure on and what that will do, that will flash and wobble, vibrate, and that's the kind of movement that could get a reflex grab, so something with teeth is likely to go after this.
I change locations and try different lures, but the result is always the same.
I'm just not getting any interest at all.
If this was an Amazon lake, a lake where you didn't have lots of commercial fishing, then I'd expect maybe four or five different species, certainly some hits, but just nothing at all, so it just points to the fact that there's not a great deal in the way of predatory fish in these waters.
Having drawn a blank in the flooded forest, as evening closes in I head back towards the village.
Each of the attacks occurred close to where people live and the creature has clearly acquired the taste for flesh, so what I need is bait that tastes just like human, and there are many people here who know just the thing.
In the days when the tribes people here were cannibalistic, they called human flesh long pig because the meat tasted so much like pork so that is what I will use.
It's obviously something a predator would be interested in, but, also, with moving water here, what that will do, that will send a nice oily trail down current, so not just anything here, but if there's anything downstream, they might sniff that and move up and investigate.
There it is! This looks like a pacu.
This is interesting, cos this was on a piece of meat.
So, um, this supposedly vegetarian fish has just broken that habit.
This pacu, the piranha's vegetarian relative, seems to like the taste of flesh.
There we go.
So much for the vegetarian pacu.
If the pacu are eating pork, then they could just as easily go for human flesh.
So are they now taking on the behaviour of their deadly relative, the piranha? I'm thinking that maybe I might have dismissed the pacu as the possible perpetrator of these attacks too soon.
In its normal habitat, the Amazon, it is a vegetarian, but it certainly has the weaponry to inflict serious damage on flesh.
All it would need would be a motive.
Now, if it turns out that there is not enough of its normal kind of food here, then it's going to do what any animal would do, which is to eat anything it can find in order to survive.
Where piranhas are concerned, small means deadly, but pacu can grow much bigger.
Here in Papua New Guinea, there's virtually no commercial fishing and there's also very little under the water in the way of predators, so it's quite possible that after only 15 years, you'd find a bigger pacu living here than anything you'd find in the Amazon.
So is this yet another example of an introduction gone wrong, especially as the attacks only started after the pacu's arrival in the Sepik River.
In their native South America, there are 12 or more fish species that share the common name pacu.
The one that has been introduced into Papua New Guinea is among the largest.
When young, this pacu mimics the red-bellied piranha.
But as they grow, they lose their red colouration and transform into formidable beasts.
Pacu are armed with jaws powerful enough to crush the hard nuts that fall from trees.
These jaws are more than capable of ripping through soft human tissue.
If it were to resort to piranha-type behaviour, this river system would be forever transformed.
A vegetarian turned carnivore may be scientifically shocking, but out here transformation is a way of life.
Tribes people turn themselves into mythical beasts and carry out elaborate, hypnotic dances to ward off evil or appease the river spirits when they are in trouble.
Boys all along the Sepik River are transformed into men through bloodletting by having the skin on their chests and backs cut, leaving scars said to be the teeth marks of crocodiles.
And now, if my hunch is correct, the pacu is also undergoing a transformation from harmless vegetarian to flesh-eating river monster.
Now my focus is catching a pacu capable of killing a man.
At the village, I meet up with Alphonse.
He tells me that since their introduction, the pacu have been devastating the river system.
So you're saying that before the pacu was here, this whole area, even in the high water like now, was covered with floating weed, floating grass? - Yeah.
- And that's now gone.
Do the crocodiles have a problem with the pacu? These floating islands are the remnants of what once covered the entire lake.
The pacu are quite literally eating the native species of the Sepik River out of house and home.
But it is not only the grass that they're eating.
- Really? - Yeah.
- You've seen that? - Yeah, seen it.
All the fish from this lake The tale of destruction gets worse and worse.
And also the pacu eat the small fish.
The pacu are eating fish.
Really? They are attacking snakes as they swim across the surface.
Snakes as well, water bird also.
Even water birds aren't safe.
Small ducks have been eaten as they paddle around.
- Duck hatchling? - Duck hatchling.
Right.
The question is, does everything include a particular part of the male anatomy? I have to catch a big pacu to see for myself exactly what they are capable of.
To do that, I'm going to try further afield.
The people in the village have told me a place in the lake to come and try.
So this area of trees poking out of the water and the reason they said come here is because dotted around here and there are bird nests and being the birds' houses, they let their droppings fall in the water and that is going to be the basis of an underwater food chain.
So you're going to get small fish in that kind of area and you're also going to get, in theory, the predators as well hanging around, so we've come in very quietly.
I'm going to drop a bait very close to those trees down here.
This rain is actually quite refreshing after such a hot day and the chances are the fish are feeling the same way, because the water gets hot, it gets low in oxygen and what the rain does, it cools the water off and also brings oxygen into it, so the chances are the fish, which have been feeling like I have all day, they could well be on the move now.
So as long as it doesn't get too heavy, it's worth me sitting it out for a couple of hours.
But as darkness falls, I begin to feel that everything is conspiring against me.
Oh.
Could be time to run for the village.
The weather is closing in and there's a distance to go, but I don't really feel any closer to getting a good-size pacu.
Certainly the small ones seem to be pretty widespread, but in terms of encountering anything larger, I feel at a loss at the moment, Run for home and then consider my options.
The following morning, I change tack yet again.
Leaving the open water, I head to an area of flooded forest.
These floods, the worst for decades, have inundated land that is normally high and dry.
It's making my task extremely difficult.
In the Amazon, pacu often congregate under fruiting trees.
I'm hoping that the same thing will occur here.
Sepik River people are extremely superstitious and believe that hostile spirits reside in the middle of these forests.
For them, this is a menacing place.
What we're doing is we're paddling very very quietly through this area of flooded trees here.
And there's some signs of fish.
We've actually seen some fish actually chewing the ends of the weeds and some fish actually swirling underneath these nut trees.
So it's just moving slowly and just casting close under the trees.
There are signs of pacu everywhere.
The sound of fruit hitting the water alerts them and they race in to eat it.
Another catch, but the red colouration tells me that again it's a juvenile.
Maybe I have to go further in.
We're going in there.
Although I find myself drawn into local superstition, I'm more concerned about what is lurking among the root tangles.
The heat in here is overwhelming and the trees cut out any breeze, so the humidity is oppressive.
This is very different from fishing by the village.
It doesn't matter if you make a noise - they're used to the noise.
Here, the only noise they are listening for is the sound of falling nuts.
Anything else other than that is going to scare them away.
Personally, I really enjoy this sort of close quarters fishing where you're relying on stealth to get close to the fish.
You're not sort of making a lot of noise and just casting a long way.
The only way you can get a bait into these areas is by getting in close.
Another catch, but this time the pull on the line suggests a larger pacu.
Not wanting to put my hands anywhere near those jaws, I use a long-handled grip to lift it out.
They're getting bigger, getting bigger.
The fish's muscular body makes it capable of bursts of speed.
It could attack and make a quick getaway without being seen.
But it's not the size that I want to catch.
I want to catch two, maybe three times the length of that, but that's good to see anyway.
As evening rolls in, I head back to the village.
Word has spread of my investigation and a fisherman has come to see me.
His name, Francis Sambin, is familiar.
As he talks, I realise that this is the man the newspapers claimed was killed by the ball-cutter.
The stories I heard, he didn't survive the encounter, but I'm very pleased to say that in reality, although this was a pretty terrifying experience by all accounts, he did actually live to tell the tale.
Although the rumours of Sambin's death were exaggerated, the attack did leave him hospitalised and in agony.
The fish was large and incredibly powerful.
The bite was not a clean cut like a piranha's, but tore and ripped his flesh and he struggled to fight it off.
This echoes the story told to me by Nick Sakat.
This giant relative of the piranha is, as I thought, growing to quite a size and with teeth to match.
I begin fishing again, now fully aware of the strength of this creature.
But the difficulty will not be bringing it in, or even landing it.
What worries me most is getting close to those jaws.
Yeah, yeah, bigger one, bigger one.
There it is.
Look at that.
It's really big.
This could be the one I've been looking for.
There's snags on the bottom, so I'll keep it away from that.
Yeah, you can just see it.
This black water You can just see it down there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, yes! Just keep it away from stuff on the bottom.
There's also people's houses in the water, just need to keep it away from that.
At the moment, it's in open water.
That's good.
I'll get it well and truly tired out before I try and do anything with this one.
Then I need to examine it, without losing a chunk of my hand.
I don't want to rush it.
Right! Oh! And, actually Just take a look at that.
As I lifted it out That straightened the hook as I lifted it out.
Now, this is interesting because I've just been seeing small ones of these.
That is That's a different animal from what I have been catching.
This is more of a size.
So the colouration is actually quite different from the small ones.
The small ones have a very dramatic red belly, which on this has faded away to this rather light orange.
But the biggest difference is Argh! Gosh, very muscular fish.
Capable of a bit of a kick, there.
This is all muscle here, so it's a very strong fish, very powerful.
But, I'm just Oh! I'm just trying to look at the business end here.
Just look at that.
On the small one, they were quite delicate teeth.
On here, those are real real crushers.
What this fish normally feeds on in the Amazon, is seeds and nuts, and they often have tough cases to be opened, so these teeth, basically, they're nutcrackers.
This thing really does look like a giant piranha.
But the teeth on this, not designed for cutting but for crushing and tearing.
Seeing those teeth reminds me of all the stories I've been told about the attacks on people.
Those teeth really do look uncannily like human teeth.
And to be bitten by those, I think that would be a very creepy experience.
It would be just like being bitten by a person.
They say that when a piranha bites you, when it actually bites, you don't know it's happening because it's such a clean cut.
But this would be a very jagged, messy, tear, and I think you'd certainly know about this when this bit you.
And if these fish hear something splashing in the water, they don't head in the opposite direction like other fish, they come heading for that sound with those teeth bared.
I'm left in no doubt that the pacu is the ball-cutter.
A vegetarian turned man-eater.
An outsize piranha with a taste for human flesh.
An alien invader running amok, dominating entire stretches of the Sepik River.
The river people now accept that the ball-cutter is something they have to live with.
It's just a graphic example of the unintended side effects you can get when you start meddling with nature.
This nightmare may seem easy to dismiss as someone else's problem far from our own backyard, but perhaps not.
Pacu have now turned up in 19 different states in the US.
So far, numbers have not exploded, nor has anyone been attacked, but just as in the Sepik, things can change very quickly and once the genie is out of the bottle, you can never put it back.