He travels to the remotest waterbodies, to islands lost in time and drops a fishing line in search of answers as he returns with his new series
Unexplained sightings of mythical beasts. Once thriving rivers now empty. Genetic oddities that may have produced monstrous creatures. Jeremy Wade travels to the remotest waterbodies, to islands lost in time and drops a fishing line in search of answers as he returns with his new series Jeremy Wade’s Dark Waters on Animal Planet every Monday and Tuesday at 9pm and the recently launched Discovery Plus app.
How did you get drawn to the water?
I lived in a village in Suffolk that had a river running through. Most small boys were given fishing rods. When I started fishing, I did not catch anything. So I was about to give it up. A friend, whose grandfather was a fisherman, showed me how to do it. The first fish I caught was only five inches long. But it awakened my curiosity.
In those days, did you get to keep your catch?
No, even back then, it was catch and release in England. It was a small island with a lot of people and not much water. So it did not make much sense to eat anything we catch. If we did that, then everything would disappear quickly.
That’s so heartening to hear.
In most places in the world, we are past the point where it is realistic to eat wild catch out of rivers. The ratio of human population to fish population does not allow for that.
Did you take to angling from that first catch?
I was about seven. I then wanted to catch different kinds of fish and then bigger fish and then wanted to travel to different places. I guess that process has continued all the way through.
Your first overseas trip was to India.
Yes, in 1982. I went to (Jim) Corbett Park. Back then, it was possible to fish there. It was my first fishing trip. I was fishing mostly for Himalayan mahasir. I caught several of those, weighing upto 18 pounds. I also caught a goonch catfish on very light equipment. It was an accidental catch. It was four-and-half feet long and has tentacles all over the body. It used to be common in the mountains but is rare now. It scavenges on dead fish. When I went home to the UK, I wrote a couple of articles in fishing magazines about my experience. Thus, the slow process of my making a living from my interest started — from that trip to India.
At what point did you realise you could launch a television career from your fishing trips?
That took a very long time. I spent 20-25 years trying to make an income from freelance writings and photographs. It took me from India to southeast Asia to Congo in central Africa and then to Amazon, where I spent a lot of time. At some point, I realised I was seeing things that I have never seen on TV. But like most people, I had no idea how to go to TV channels with an idea. Occasionally, I used to be contacted by TV production companies for information. But they never gave me work. It was a stroke of luck when, in 2000, I took a photograph of a fish in the Amazon called Arapaima which was seen by a TV producer in London. It took him three years to follow that idea. In 2002, I ended up making a TV series in the Amazon.
What kind of fish is the Arapaima?
It is an Amazonian fish. It is said to be the biggest freshwater fish in the world. They grow up to two metres. They have an interesting adaptation. They can live in low oxygen content. Lakes are drying out and getting low in oxygen as the water falls in the Amazon. Other fish are struggling but the Arapaima can continue hunting. That’s why they grow so big.
Your River Monsters has been on our TV listings page for ages.
That show ran for nine seasons. We were getting to the end of material for that kind of story. It was about somebody getting bitten in the water and then we uncovered what could be responsible for that. For one year, we did a show called Mighty Rivers. There was an episode on the Ganga. Following that, we did Dark Waters. It is similar to River Monsters but we opened things out a bit. It was more general underwater mysteries regarding creatures. For example, over the centuries, there have been stories about this lake monster in Lake Garda in north Italy. We were trying to see if there is a real creature behind the myth. We interviewed eyewitnesses. But the story didn’t go anywhere.
You also went to Alaska for the show.
Alaska, historically, is incredibly rich in terms of the salmon that run up the river. The biggest is King Salmon. But in recent years, they have been in marked decline. We were looking at what might have caused the decline. The problem with salmon is they are in the river for a very small part of their lives. The rest of the time they are in the sea. We don’t know what they do there. This investigation was not just about Yukon river but also
Нема коментара:
Постави коментар