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  • 2 days ago
River.Monsters.S03E04
Transcript
00:00Animal Planet. Surprisingly human.
00:10My name's Jeremy Wade.
00:13For as long as I can remember, I've had a passion that verges on obsession.
00:18Dangerous freshwater fish have got me well and truly hooked.
00:23Their deadly reputations have always fascinated me, as well as their methods of attack.
00:28I think we've gone!
00:31In rivers around the world, I've seen everything from giant venom-coated stings to tiny assassins that drill into flesh.
00:41I've held a fish that could slice off my arm, smelt the breath of a beast that inhales its victim's hold.
00:47I've felt the hammer blow of an 80-pound battering ram.
00:51Yet, of all the nasty devices I've come across, there is one murderous-looking weapon that really stands out.
01:03It belongs to a sea monster that swims hundreds of miles up rivers.
01:08A monster that has completely eluded me until now.
01:15Fish on! Fish on!
01:16Fish on!
01:17Fish on!
01:18Fish on!
01:21Nearly 20 years ago, on my first fishing trip to the Amazon, I was in a hardware store looking for rope and other supplies,
01:47when I caught sight of something that stopped me dead in my tracks.
01:54It was about a yard long, with a profile just like a chainsaw, except that each vicious-looking point was fully two inches long.
02:07What I'd stumbled upon was the snout, or rostrum, of a fish the locals called the araguagua.
02:12This is an animal I'd been vaguely aware of from my youth, but which I'd never actually seen.
02:23In the comics and adventure books of my childhood, this creature was normally depicted as a sea monster,
02:28usually brandishing its serrated weapon at terrified skin divers.
02:32But I don't ever remember seeing a picture of a real one, and until that hardware store in Brazil,
02:45I'd no idea that this large and wickedly armed fish might swim up rivers.
02:50The animal in question is known in English as a sawfish.
03:02Giants over 20 feet long have occasionally been caught.
03:07And legend has it that these monsters will even attack boats.
03:11In the 16th century, the Swedish chronicler Olaus Magnus states that this terrifying fish will, and I quote,
03:19swim under ships and cut them, that the water may come in, and he may feed on the men when the ship is drowned.
03:29More recently, a story from India talks of a man hacked in two.
03:33If those accounts sound far-fetched, then more believable, perhaps, is this newspaper article from the 1930s
03:40about an attack off the coast of Florida.
03:44The story goes that a fisherman harpooned a large sawfish in shallow water.
03:51But when the brute spun round and struck the boat with its snout, tables were suddenly turned.
04:03They shudder to imagine that rack of teeth scything into human flesh.
04:14Despite severe injuries, the victim in this instance appears to have survived.
04:20But I've long wondered if the animal that attacked him could be the most fearsome of any fish to lurk in a river.
04:33As I prepare to go in search of one, two questions are at the front of my mind.
04:41Why is such a large sea-dwelling predator coming into fresh water?
04:47And is the sawfish as deadly as it looks?
04:54Once common throughout the tropics, sawfish are now increasingly hard to find.
04:58Commercial fishing in particular has taken a heavy toll.
05:07Decades of overkill have almost wiped them out.
05:12To track down this rare beast, I'm heading to Australia's wild northwest.
05:17I've come to the remote Fitzroy River, one of the last strongholds of the so-called freshwater sawfish.
05:34Somewhere here, so I've heard, lurks a creature barely changed since the age of the dinosaurs.
05:47At the mouth of the river, I venture into unfamiliar territory.
05:53This is a no-man's land of shifting mud and treacherous currents.
06:00But the dangers I can see are only half the picture.
06:04Hidden below the surface are some of the world's most notorious man-eaters.
06:09I've been granted special permission to try and catch the critically endangered sawfish.
06:31This puts me in a truly privileged position.
06:34Yet in such a vast area, there's no guarantee I'll even find one.
06:40Hundreds of square miles of open water.
06:43It is ridiculous.
06:46The warm, shallow water at the mouth of the Fitzroy is prime sawfish habitat.
06:52Twenty years ago, a local fisherman snagged an 18-footer not far from here.
07:04It's pretty lively.
07:14Yeah, it's that or something.
07:18It's pretty lively.
07:22It's pretty lively.
07:26Yeah, it's that or something.
07:32Now, if I hadn't seen what was responsible for that, I might be getting quite excited now.
07:37I might be thinking that's something toothy, but that's crab claw marks.
07:42Everything is hungry down here.
07:49Out of the corner of my eye, I'm aware of a more sinister predator.
07:53For a saltwater crocodile, humans, as well as crabs, are fair game.
08:00This wouldn't be a good place to fall in.
08:02This time, I'm hooked into something meaty.
08:18It's only day one, but I wonder if I'm about to get lucky.
08:22That's actually running.
08:24Back a little, back a little, back, back, back.
08:27Oh, here we go.
08:29Coming up.
08:30Coming up.
08:43In Northwest Australia, I'm on the trail of a monster that's almost vanished from the face of the earth.
08:48But the sawfish isn't the only big fish in these waters.
08:53Okay, okay, hold there, hold there, hold there.
08:55I'm gonna take this easy, because I can't actually, I can't get a positive ID in the water.
08:59It's very muddy water.
09:01Oh, it's a shark, it's a shark.
09:12This estuary is just full of predators.
09:15Bull shark.
09:20I keep well clear of its mouth.
09:22Even a five-foot juvenile could bite my hand off.
09:25The adults can reach 13 feet.
09:29Okay.
09:31And probably kill more people than any other shark.
09:36This is one of the few sea dwellers which, like sawfish, can swim up rivers.
09:41Well, that was a bit of drama.
09:44I'm glad we got that in.
09:46It's always exciting to get a fish like that in on light tackle.
09:49But a bit of disappointment, that's not the fish that I'm after.
09:53I'm after something that looks actually quite similar to that.
09:56So I've got it all to do again.
09:57Next time the line goes, I want it to be a big sawfish, not a bull shark.
10:06Physically, sawfish resemble sharks quite closely.
10:10They have shark-like dorsal fins, a long body and a high sweeping tail.
10:16In other ways, they're more like their true ancestors, rays.
10:20The gills, for example, sit underneath.
10:23The head is flat and the mouth is a narrow slit.
10:28But it's the snout that intrigues me.
10:31Despite its vicious profile, few have ever seen it in action.
10:36Malcolm Douglas is an exception.
10:39Just real-life Crocodile Dundee has witnessed nature's very own chainsaw massacre.
10:44In 1967, I was up around Darwin and just as we came out of this creek in the morning,
10:50I saw something.
10:51I saw a big school of mullet all cruising and they're all sort of huddling together.
10:56And I said to my mate, I said, something's stressing those mullet.
11:00And next thing, this massive saw came up between them.
11:03And it just went bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, faster than a speeding bullet, as they say.
11:09And then he just came through gobbling them up and then he turned around again.
11:12And he did that several times.
11:17We just thought that was just the most fantastic thing that we ever saw.
11:24The saw on that, I'd measured it from memory, was around about eight foot long.
11:31A saw?
11:32Yeah, the saw itself.
11:33Yeah, it's huge.
11:34I'm not exaggerating.
11:35I'm not prone to exaggeration.
11:40This high-spec weapon is stuffed with sensors that pick up not just the movement of nearby
11:44animals but also their electrical aura.
11:47Even in total darkness, a sawfish can nail its target.
11:53According to Malcolm, they also use their saw in self-defence.
11:56You really had a rack of those going into your leg.
12:00As the dry season comes on here, the fish will get very shallow, right?
12:05And these sawfish will hang around quite often in the shallow water.
12:08Now, if you trap a sawfish between the bank and the deep channel, he will come at you with
12:12that saw and he'll just lash around like this.
12:14This is his protection.
12:15Now, if you get hit in the leg or the arm or the stomach, it's not a pretty sight.
12:19It'll almost be worse than a crocodile bite because it's a rip right through like this,
12:24you know?
12:25And then they'll come back and they'll hit you two or three times.
12:28Right.
12:29Don't call me, mate.
12:30You'll probably die there.
12:42The dry season is the only time you can explore the Fitzroy River, at least by vehicle.
12:48During the rains, all of this is underwater.
12:54I head to a deep channel known as Telegraph Pool.
12:59By moving a few miles inland, I'm hoping to improve my chances of catching a sawfish.
13:07Strong tides bring a lot of smaller fish into this lower section of the river,
13:11making it a rich hunting ground for large predators.
13:21Some are already lining up.
13:26With crocodiles, they say it's the ones you can't see that you have to worry about.
13:32Hardly reassuring when they vanish without trace into muddy water.
13:40We're just waiting for nightfall, but it's a good state of the tide as well.
13:44The tide will be coming up soon.
13:46Apparently the sawfish move up with the tide.
13:48I don't move down with the tide.
13:51So I've just got a couple of baits out.
13:54Yeah, it's all looking very fishy at the moment.
13:59A few locals also brave this spot.
14:02Most are after barramundi, a sport fish prized for its fighting spirit.
14:08In general, though, anglers want to avoid sawfish, which can rip lines as well as flesh.
14:14To boost my chances, I've set up two rods.
14:27By sunset, my baits are still untouched.
14:31And as darkness falls, the mood grows more sinister.
14:34It's not just the crocs that are making me edgy.
14:43People have lived here for tens of thousands of years, and their spirits seem to haunt the shadows.
14:49With each passing hour, I feel more like a trespasser in someone else's world.
15:05Daylight comes as a relief, and then brings an unexpected breakthrough.
15:10Do you want a hand with that?
15:11Yeah, please.
15:12Another fisherman, up early before the heat of the day, has accidentally hooked a sawfish.
15:26This two-footer is a mere pup, but an extra pair of hands still doesn't go amiss.
15:32Were you fishing for these, or...?
15:34No, barramundi.
15:35Barramundi.
15:36Right.
15:37I've caught everything but.
15:38Right.
15:39It's the first one of these I've seen.
15:40OK.
15:41I'm out of range now.
15:42It's only a small one.
15:44This baby sawfish is the monster in miniature, and my first chance to get a safe look at this bizarre animal.
15:51Wow.
15:53Right.
15:54That's the first one of these I've seen.
15:56Imagine one of these things 20-foot long, which is what they grow to when they get into the sea.
15:59But, yeah, so just like a shark, if you look at the back end of it, come forward, that's just like a raised mouth, a stingray's mouth.
16:09But, you know, that is the unique feature.
16:11And even on a small one like this, just look, you know, that's quite a fearsome weapon.
16:16And actually, although this is a small one, very good thing to see, because for fish like this to exist,
16:21when this is probably about a year old, they have to be breeding size adults around.
16:28Fantastic.
16:29I wish I caught it myself.
16:33I'm here to catch a monster.
16:35But for now, I just want to return the pup unharmed.
16:42Just moving the tail to get the circulation going a bit.
16:45Sorefish travel more than 200 miles up the Fitzroy River, deep into the arid Australian outback.
17:03I want to know why they swim so far into fresh water and how dangerous they are to humans.
17:13The Aborigines have lived with these predators for at least 50,000 years.
17:27Sorefish feature in their tribal dances, and in one of their dreamtime stories,
17:32the animal uses its huge saw to gouge out the rivers of the land.
17:36I'm now over 150 miles from the coast and on my way to meet some of the Bunuba tribe.
17:55They call this stretch of river Dan Ku, or deep water, and I can see why.
18:03The white band along the cliffs is a stark warning of how far this river rises during the rains.
18:09For 30 feet above me, the rocks have been scrubbed clean.
18:13With help from the Bunuba, I'm hoping to catch my first sawfish.
18:18But I also want to find out from them how dangerous it really is.
18:24Since coming here, I've already picked up one story of an attack from northern Australia.
18:31Back in the 1940s, a large sawfish first ripped itself out of a net,
18:36then pursued the fisherman's boat.
18:38What happened next, almost beggars believe.
18:51How many teeth does a sawfish have inside its mouth?
18:55The answer, right after this.
19:01Inside its mouth, a sawfish has some 17,000 small teeth,
19:05fused into hard plates that crush its prey.
19:15In Western Australia, I'm 150 miles up the Fitzroy River,
19:20on the trail of the giant but very rare freshwater sawfish.
19:2660 years ago, two fishermen were smashed clean out of their boat by one of these creatures.
19:31What spooks me about this story is not the men's injuries.
19:42Incredibly, they escaped virtually unscathed.
19:46But according to the report, the boat's solid wooden hull was punctured by the animal's teeth.
19:52Such was the force of one of its blows.
19:54The aborigines have long hunted sawfish for food and are still allowed to catch them.
20:11As an outsider though, I'm not sure how they'll take to me fishing for one in their waters.
20:15Around here, it's mostly the women who do the fishing, so it's their knowledge I want to tap into.
20:25Mary Aitken is an elder from the Bunuba tribe.
20:29She grew up on this river and begins by recounting the story of a large sawfish that she caught here many years ago.
20:34We hauled it in onto the bank and one of my family members banged it on the head and pulled it up onto the sandbar.
20:46And then we called out to some locals that were going downstream on the boat.
20:53We asked them to put the sawfish on the boat, otherwise we'd have been struggling with it.
20:57How many were you?
20:59There was about four or five of us.
21:01And you couldn't take it between you?
21:02We didn't have no blokes, it was just all ladies.
21:05It seems the fish was almost too big for the back of Mary's pick-up.
21:10Well, when we put it into the Toyota, we couldn't put it sort of across because it was too big.
21:16So we had to slide it in and a little bit of tail digging out, but we managed to close the back.
21:22So you just got it on the back of the...
21:23Yeah, just got it on, yeah.
21:25So it fed a lot of people, yeah.
21:28So what about children? When they go fishing here, they're catching small fish and then they get one of these sawfish on the line.
21:36I mean, do they ever get hurt by them?
21:38We stand well away from it, you know. We tell the kids the same thing.
21:43We tell them it's too dangerous to hang around while it's still alive and kicking.
21:48Then Mary hands me the largest saw I've ever seen.
21:52The savage potential of this ready-made weapon certainly hasn't been lost on humans.
21:58There are records of sawfish rostrums being used as weapons right across the Western Pacific from the Philippines down through New Guinea as far as New Zealand.
22:11They'd use it to slice open the abdomens of their enemies and also to open up the veins on the inside of the elbows causing fatal bleeding.
22:20And even just a couple of years ago here in Australia, a couple of burglars attacked a man in a caravan using a sawfish rostrum and they put him in hospital.
22:29But whether the sawfish itself sets out to attack people is less clear.
22:42So far, the evidence is about as shadowy as the beast itself.
22:46By mid-dry season, the Fitzroy has shrunk from a raging torrent into a series of quiet pools with little or no moving water.
23:07This ought to concentrate the sawfish and make them easier to find.
23:11But before I go looking, I'll need plenty of fresh bait.
23:14Mary catches hers with a throw net and makes it look easy.
23:22It's a method I've seen people use all around the world, but have never tried myself.
23:27What's that? Is that a brim or something?
23:29Yep.
23:31The theory could hardly be simpler.
23:33Cast a circle and your net covers the greatest possible area, thus snagging more fish.
23:39You just grab half of this and throw it over your shoulder.
23:42Right.
23:44Swing the net on the side of your hip.
23:46Yep.
23:47Uh-huh.
23:50And just throw it at it.
23:52Love it.
23:58With fresh bait on her line, Mary is quickly into her fishing.
24:01Meanwhile, I'm getting into a bit of a muddle.
24:06That was a square.
24:07Try lifting your shoulder when you throw it.
24:08That's a better one.
24:09After a slow start, I've finally won some respect.
24:17And Mary lets me in on a few good fishing spots along the gorge.
24:18Sawfish have roamed the earth for at least a hundred million years.
24:20Yet the rocks under my feet are nearly £420,000.
24:42Sawfish have roamed the earth for at least a hundred million years,
24:47yet the rocks under my feet are nearly four times this old.
24:56My walkabout takes me to the top of a limestone cliff,
24:59the remnant of a once mighty barrier reef that lay beneath an ancient ocean.
25:07Beyond the horizon, parts of this continent date back four billion years.
25:12That's almost as old as life itself.
25:26I'm looking for a stretch of water with a deep channel,
25:29the kind of place where a big sawfish might lie up.
25:33I've got the whole river to myself,
25:35and with limited time I'm eager to get fishing.
25:42This is about as simple as fishing gets I suppose, just using a hand line.
25:53So there's the hook down in the water,
25:55a little bit of lead holding the bait in place,
25:57and this end just a winder.
25:59And this is what the locals use, so I'm just giving it a go,
26:03and they'll tend to go away and just come back and check the line after a couple of hours,
26:08make sure it's fastened to something.
26:10They tend to look a bit askance at me sitting, actually holding the line,
26:13but I've only got a limited time here.
26:14I want to feel when something comes along, make sure the hook sets,
26:17but from their point of view I'm wasting energy and also sitting out in the sun unnecessarily.
26:22All that remains now is to sit and wait for something to find the bait.
26:34As the hours slip by, I try out several spots along the river.
26:39By mid-afternoon the only animals I've managed to flush out are a bunch of cockatoos.
26:45Surprisingly, the shallow pools are still full of life.
26:53Even in the dry season there are plenty of shrimp and brim to be found.
26:59This will be good ammunition for later.
27:06As I return to camp, I wonder if the abundance of food
27:09might explain why sawfish come so far upriver.
27:15If the pickings are rich enough and you can adapt to fresh water, then why not?
27:23Recently, in South Africa, I caught huge adult bull sharks
27:27which were swimming way into fresh water for just this reason.
27:34But if the same is true of sawfish,
27:36then why aren't I hearing stories of giant 20-foot river monsters?
27:41It occurs to me that even here, in what's thought to be one of their last strongholds,
27:47these prehistoric beasts could be vanishing.
27:57Perhaps darkness will draw a sawfish out of its lair.
28:00It's often said they're more active at night.
28:08Just in case I doze off, I tie an empty can to the line.
28:12Should anything run off with the bait, the noise of it moving will wake me up.
28:16I'm over 150 miles from the mouth of the river here,
28:28but apparently in the past, according to Mary,
28:30there have been some big sawfish caught from this very place.
28:33A long day baking in the outback sun has left me exhausted.
28:52But my overcooked brain refuses to switch off.
28:58I still have little sense of how dangerous sawfish are to people.
29:04Back in that hardware store 20 years ago, the answer seemed obvious.
29:09Yet for such a large and viciously armed beast,
29:12I'd have expected a lot more bad press.
29:18Especially from populated areas where sawfish were once common.
29:24After all, this is a fish said to have hacked a man in two.
29:28A man in two.
29:58After a day of fishing without success, darkness has finally brought me a bite.
30:07My bare hands take the strain as I wind in the line.
30:11But the fish on the end is not what I'm expecting.
30:21Bullshark.
30:22A bullshark this far inland is a real eye-opener.
30:33These aggressive fish are clearly thriving here,
30:36even during the dry season when this part of the river is little more than a stagnant pond.
30:40So, a pretty hostile environment.
30:45You can see why everything in there basically is tooled up.
30:50You know, the sawfish possibly needs that weaponry for defence.
30:53Who knows?
30:54Anyway, I'd better put this back.
30:57And I just hope I don't hook him up again.
31:13Even though I know bullsharks come up in, you know, fresh water,
31:17you know, it's still really strange seeing them here.
31:20But the monster I'm after is nowhere to be seen.
31:35It was only recently that outsiders realised there were sawfish in this river
31:39and began to study them.
31:40I'm leaving Dhan Khu and heading a hundred miles back downstream
31:46to hook up with a small sawfish research team.
31:49Perhaps their knowledge can help me in my quest.
31:54I turn off the main highway to a dusty outpost called Kambalin
31:58and then follow a dirt track to an abandoned irrigation dam.
32:02For most of the year, this man-made barrier stops sawfish swimming upstream.
32:06They accumulate below the dam, making this an ideal spot for the research team.
32:18Dr. Dave Morgan, who leads the research, is passionate about sawfish.
32:24By tagging and tracking individual fish, he's starting to build up a picture of their secret lives.
32:28But as we head out to set trapping nets, we're busy watching our backs.
32:44Crocodiles seem to be following our activity with a predatory interest.
32:49This is risky work.
32:53If you get too focused on the crocs and take your eye off what's under your nose,
32:58you can wind up getting karate chopped by a sawfish in the net.
33:01Just trying to do it from a boat in a deep section, that's when you get off and get hit a lot.
33:06Or when you don't want to get out of the boat because there's crocodiles or saltwater crocodiles around,
33:11then you get hit.
33:12I've yet to lock horns with a sawfish, but just the thought of being nailed by a croc is making me jumpy.
33:29There's something, hang on, there's something, there's something grey in the water.
33:32In the dark, murky water, I can't make out what's in the net.
33:54Can you feel something, Jeremy?
33:57Yeah, definitely, there's a real kick, kick, kick like that.
33:58Yeah, is it a long kick?
34:01There we can see, can you see that?
34:03Yeah, yeah, that's one.
34:05Croc, bull shark or sawfish, this has to be the lucky dip from hell.
34:10Let's just do a quick croc spot.
34:13There was a croc coming in over there that had left the bank and was out in the middle.
34:16Just be careful, mate. It could be a bull shark or a freshwater, a saltwater crocodile.
34:29Well, they get wrapped in the nets, they come and take the fish out of the nets?
34:34Well, the freshers generally go for catfish, but the soldiers definitely prefer the barramundi.
34:40I'm starting to wish I was somewhere else.
34:43Well, they'll chew them in the nets and try and fight you for them.
34:49Oh.
34:53Shall I attempt to grab that?
34:54Yeah.
34:55Shall I attempt to grab that?
34:56Yeah.
34:57Because that's...
35:15Well, no sawfish in the net, but this is a bull shark.
35:18OK.
35:24I'd normally be fired up to find bull sharks so far upstream in freshwater,
35:29but they're starting to feel like a plague,
35:31and I wonder how many more I might have to pull out from this crocodile soup
35:35before I find a sawfish.
35:38I'm told that the annual flood was lower than normal this year,
35:41making it hard for sawfish to move upstream.
35:44At any rate, the last nets are all empty.
35:48They're all empty.
35:57With cruel irony, daylight brings the threat of an unseasonal storm.
36:02Out here in the bush, heavy rain can spell trouble.
36:11The timing is absolutely crucial.
36:13If I was here in the wet season, I'd be sitting under water,
36:15which is precisely why they come now in the dry season.
36:17Not only is the river accessible, but also the fact that it's down,
36:21about 30 foot, the fish are more confined.
36:25The problem is, is that the weather actually is changing.
36:30There's wind blowing.
36:31We had rain last night, and there's real concern at the moment
36:34that if there's any more rain, the tracks leading in here
36:36are going to become impassable, so everyone's keeping an eye on the weather.
36:40If there is signs of things turning bad, we're just going to throw everything in the vehicles and get out of here,
36:44and that will be a premature end to my mission.
36:47With a big storm approaching, the research team has no choice but to beat a retreat.
37:04Yet it seems there is still a glimmer of hope.
37:09To stay one step ahead of the weather, we head back to Telegraph Pool.
37:22This is my last chance to catch the monster that I've waited nearly 20 years to see.
37:28While Dave and his team prepare for another night of trapping,
37:32I return, superstitiously perhaps, to the exact spot where I release the baby sawfish.
37:39Maybe this is where my prayers will finally be answered.
38:02Oh!
38:18Fish on! Fish on!
38:21Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
38:32On the Fitzroy River in Australia, I'm hooked into a beast that means business.
38:40Good size, good size.
38:45It's coming in quite close, it's already quite icky.
38:50I'm going to need someone to grab it.
38:53I think it's ready, it's ready, I think.
38:57Oh, it's a sawfish, it's a sawfish.
39:02At last, the animal that's been swimming around on my head for nearly 20 years.
39:17Here we go, my first sawfish.
39:26Look at this for a beast.
39:28This thing nearly seven foot long, it's bigger than I am.
39:30And that rostrum on there, that's a foot and a half long.
39:35It's got 39 of those teeth, each one's about an inch long, wickedly sharp.
39:40You've got a huge dorsal fin, a very big second dorsal fin, very big tail.
39:45And they anchor the body, and when the body flexes,
39:49it's this head and this rostrum that really scythe from side to side.
39:53It's about to tense, we're about to have a splash, yeah, here we go.
39:57Yeah.
39:59This journey began almost 20 years ago.
40:02In the heart of the Amazon, I stood staring at a vicious looking weapon, and wondered if I'd ever see its owner in the flesh.
40:17Now, in a remote river in Australia, I've finally got my hands on a live sawfish.
40:27So I hold that down.
40:29The scientists, meanwhile, think they've figured out why these creatures come into fresh water.
40:33Flat on the rostrum.
40:35Dave's latest measurements show that they're using the Fitzroy as a nursery.
40:40Acoustic tag going in here.
40:43Despite all the predators, it's still safer here than in the sea.
40:47Only when they reach eight or nine feet long do sawfish leave the river.
40:52As an adult living in salt water, this fish could one day become a 20-foot giant.
40:58But I came here to find out if this fish is also a monster in terms of deed.
41:05Now, there's no doubt that that fearsome-toothed rostrum is potentially a lethal weapon,
41:10and it's certainly been used as such in the hands of humans.
41:13But I can find just no instance at all of this fish having attacked a human being willfully.
41:20In other words, its monstrous appearance is not matched by its behaviour.
41:23Certainly if you're a small fish, this thing is a deadly weapon.
41:27But from the human point of view, the sawfish is the archetypal gentle giant.
41:36Sawfish are as tough as they come.
41:39This one has already shrugged off a shark bite, as well as a recent croc attack.
41:44Yet, in a world full of nets, the very weapon it needs to survive is now liable to get it snagged and killed.
41:57My only fear, as it swims away, is that we may be seeing the last of these ancient and extraordinary monsters.
42:04Want to know how to catch a river monster of your own?
42:21I'll show you how at animalplanet.com slash rivermonsters.
42:24I'll show you how at animalplanet.com slash rivermonsters.
42:25How at animalplanet.com slash rivermonsters.