My name's Jeremy Wade.
For 25 years, I've chased dangerous fish
up some of the wildest rivers on the planet,
tracking down the facts that lie behind legends.
I'm fascinated by the real-life monsters
that sometimes eat us...
and which feed on nightmares.
But as a biologist, I want to know the truth.
Now I'm back on the hunt,
lured by the riddle of an 8-foot flesh-eater
that's said to devour humans.
If I'm right, this alleged killer
is born deep in the ocean...
Yet transforms itself into a freshwater predator.
The fish I'm after has a grip like a vise,
and it stands accused of terrifying attacks.
Imagine a land mass cut off from the rest of the world
for 80 million years...
A wilderness of impenetrable forests
and lakes almost twice as deep as Loch Ness.
Now suppose that in the cold, dark waters
of this lost world
lurks a predator big enough to kill a man.
This was virtually the last place on Earth
to be discovered.
When the Maori came here barely 800 years ago,
there was one animal they revered above all others.
I've always thought of New Zealand
as a totally safe place to get in the water,
but just recently, two separate reports have caught my eye
and made me think again.
One incident concerns a young man, Clint Haines,
who was out on a remote lake in New Zealand's South Island.
According to this newspaper report,
Haines had gone out to recover a friend's boat propeller
from the bottom of the lake.
He knew the lake well, or at least he thought he did.
At about 100 feet down,
something massive suddenly swam towards him.
And within seconds, there were more of them,
he says up to about 80 pounds in size.
In the pitch black, one of these creatures
sank its jaws into one of Clint's fins
and started to drag him down.
Panicking, he dropped his flashlight
and swam for his life.
Clint's wife, Bev, remembers how this aggressive pack
actually pursued him to the surface,
where Clint was screaming to get out.
He'd come up so fast from deep water
that he collapsed with the bends.
Haines survived the attack but was plagued by nightmares.
For Ian Sutherland,
another diver working in northern New Zealand,
a similar encounter proved to be more violent.
The creature in this case was already a local legend.
Its head was reportedly a foot across.
Without warning, it rammed Ian in the chest
with enough force to crack one of his ribs.
By all accounts,
the animals that grabbed and thumped these two divers
were supersized eels.
Now, I've heard about monstrous sea-dwelling eels.
Some, like this European conger, can grow to 10 feet long,
and the giant moray is a seriously large animal,
certainly big enough to attack humans.
One well-known account here
of a diver getting his thumb ripped off and eaten.
But the idea that a freshwater eel
could ever be huge or dangerous comes as a real surprise.
New Zealand, in fact, has three kinds of freshwater eel.
The speckled eel grows to around 6 feet long,
but it's off my suspect list because it doesn't live
in the lake where Haines was attacked.
At little more than 4 feet long,
the shortfin eel is simply too small to fit the bill.
The most likely perpetrator is the longfin,
an eel that's unique to New Zealand
and which is known to grow to at least 6 feet.
Modern records have this snakelike fish
growing to around 55 pounds,
but there are older anecdotal reports
of much larger specimens.
In the 19th century, the naturalist Thomas Potts
mentions a 90-pounder landed from a place called Stonyhurst.
And there's even a story of a 130-pound eel
taken from a deep lake in New Zealand's South Island.
Such an eel, if it ever existed,
must have looked like an underwater python.
These accounts are certainly intriguing,
but buried in the archives of London's Maritime Museum
is an even more tantalizing description
of a creature that's not only a monster
but also a man-eater.
Some 240 years ago, British explorer James Cook
painstakingly mapped the coastline of New Zealand.
As he did so, he gathered information
from the Maori inhabitants about native wildlife.
And in one of his many journals,
he alludes very specifically to a man-eating monster.
Following a conversation with the local chief,
Cook writes, and I quote,
"We had another piece of information
importing that there are here snakes and lizards
of an enormous size... 8 feet long
and equal to a man's body in circumference.
They sometimes seize and devour men."
According to Cook,
the chief actually drew a picture
of one of these creatures to show what he meant,
but the obvious conclusion
that this beast must be a python
or possibly some kind of huge lizard
simply can't be right.
What makes this account so intriguing
and also so problematic
is that there are no snakes or any large reptiles
in New Zealand,
and there never have been.
As I head for New Zealand,
my prime suspect for Captain Cook's devourer of men
is not a snake
but a fish that looks like a snake.
It's a theory that seems more plausible
when you consider Maori folklore.
Maori legends are full of tales
about predatory beasts called taniwha.
Now, these potentially very dangerous creatures
are quite slippery customers,
and sometimes they take the form of a giant eel.
I'm starting my search for a giant longfin
at a place called Mangawhitikau, near Waitomo,
on New Zealand's north island.
Supposedly, there are eels that have lived in this cave
for at least 30 years
and have never seen daylight.
More disconcertingly, the Maori name for this underworld
means "bad place to cross the river."
Eels are at the heart of Maori culture.
Legend has it that they all sprang
from a single huge ancestor.
The story goes that there was a drought up in heaven,
and a giant eel was sent down to Earth
to try and find water for the gods.
But while it was here,
it tried to seduce the wife of Maui,
who was the most powerful of the Maori gods,
and, enraged,
Maui fought with the giant eel and hacked it in two,
and the severed head
gave rise to all the seawater eels,
and the tail, so the story goes,
gave rise to all the freshwater eels.
Even with a flashlight and a head lamp,
I'm straining to see more than a few feet.
I've no idea what might be lurking here,
but to tempt something out of the shadows,
I decide to dip a piece of meat into the water.
Straightaway, an eel emerges.
This one isn't huge, but it is surprisingly bold.
Despite living in pitch black,
it has absolutely no fear of the light or of me.
It's on a single-minded search for flesh.
Yet this carnivorous instinct
doesn't, on its own, make the longfin a killer.
I want to find out
if they can get big enough and aggressive enough
to be seriously dangerous to people.
Could they ever be, in the words of Cook,
devourers of men?
To get a proper look at what makes the longfin eel
New Zealand's top freshwater predator,
I first have to catch one.
When it comes to bait, anything goes.
Fresh roadkill could be worth a try.
Eels tend to be more active at night,
relying on smell rather than sight to find food.
I use a concoction of guts and offal to draw them in.
Eels have a phenomenal ability to sense blood.
My two rods are each equipped with an electronic alarm
primed to go off if something makes a grab for the bait.
I don't have to wait long.
If there's flesh on offer,
it seems these animals are into it like starved piranhas.
Even with a small one, I have to take special care,
because these fish have poisonous blood.
The serum contains a neurotoxin that can kill dogs,
and just a splash into my eye or a cut
as I try to unhook it
could land me in serious trouble.
Doesn't feel like a normal fish at all...
Very, very smooth skin.
They do actually have scales,
but they're embedded under her layer of skin.
Not very big eyes... they don't really use their eyes to hunt.
But they do use smell,
and you can see what looks like a pair of horns
on the front of the head there.
In fact, these structures are tubes
that funnel water into enlarged nasal chambers.
The eel's sense of smell is even more sensitive
than that of a great white shark.
Having zeroed in, an eel grabs its prey
with powerful jaws that bristle with hundreds of teeth.
You can see why people
consider these to be very similar to snakes,
even though they are technically fish.
There are plenty of eels here
but nothing over 3 feet long.
Leaving legends aside, I wonder if science
can shed any light on the question of size.
Just how big, in theory, could this animal grow?
Inside the skull of a dead eel
may seem like a strange place to look for an answer,
but Dr. Don Jellyman
is the world authority in these animals,
and he knows exactly what he's after.
So, this is the brain, the spinal cord,
and this little item that sits in a small sac just in the back here
and is part of the balancing system...
So that's what we're after, Jeremy...
That little bone here holds the key
to a lot of the life history of the eel,
its age, its growth rate.
Once magnified, this tiny ear bone
reveals the growth history of the fish.
So, is that the same sort of principle
as counting the rings on a tree, something like that?
It is. It's exactly the same.
A 2-to 3-foot eel can be 30 years old,
but amazingly, this is just a youngster.
What's the oldest they might be, do you think?
Any conjectures?
Well, the oldest that I've aged is 105 years old,
and from that lake,
the average age at which the females migrated
was 93 years.
It's extraordinary, isn't it?
One thing I've been thinking about
is this mention in Captain Cook's journals
about... he was told about something
that was snakelike and 8 feet long.
Would one of these be capable of growing to 8 feet,
do you think, in ideal conditions?
It's quite likely, in the wild,
that they would have grown
to a very, very large size like that.
So that could be a reliable report,
and at that length, how much is that gonna weigh, roughly?
Well over 100 pounds at that stage, yeah, yeah.
Gosh.
- That's a big fish. - Yeah.
It's a seriously big fish.
So that Captain Cook report... it could have been one of these.
It could well have been.
It might be of interest just to have a look inside it,
so we'll just...
Do a run up through here.
So, ooh, there is something in here.
- That's the stomach there. - That's quite full, isn't it?
Let's take a peek.
I'm rather interested to know what this has got in it.
With toxic blood oozing out of the eel's body,
I'm careful to wash my hands.
Um, so...
Aha.
Is that another eel?
It's another eel, yes. It's well-digested.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so they can be quite cannibalistic.
They're just well-adapted
to taking those opportunities as they arise.
If there's tucker there, they're into it, yeah.
My photo fit of Captain Cook's monster
is starting to take shape.
It's a fish with real nerve...
Guided by the nose of a bloodhound...
And armed with hundreds of close-packed teeth.
It can live for more than a century
and potentially at least grow to 8 feet long.
It also happens to have toxic blood
and a taste for its own kind.
But is it truly dangerous?
To find out, I've booked myself onto a popular radio chat show.
Radio Southland, 96.4 FM.
I'm talking with well-known angler Jeremy Wade,
who's really interested in hearing your stories
about longfin eels.
So, give us a call on...
I'm looking for evidence of aggression,
and the lines are soon buzzing.
Man #2: An eel came and latched on to the deer carcass,
and we had a wrestling match for that.
Man #3: She latched on to my finger.
Man #4: When I looked down, I had quite a surprise.
Quite a large black eel.
Man #5: It would have to have been, you know, 2 meters
and as round as a man's thigh.
Man #6: my finger and then stripped back to the bone.
Man #7: There are some monsters. There's no question of that.
I was prepared for tales of ducklings swallowed whole,
but it seems that some eels strike at much larger prey.
Yeah, I took my dog Sam down to the river,
and we were playing with a ball.
I was throwing it, and he was bringing it back to me.
And I threw it this one time,
and I heard him go in for it.
I could hear something going on,
but I couldn't see him.
He just disappeared under the water.
I'm still taking note when a man calls in
to tell me about some sheep that were eaten alive.
Then, to top it all,
the story of a man who went skinny dipping.
Right. I get your drift.
So this chap who was hospitalized,
was he missing anything when he got out of hospital?
Okay.
My respect for these longfins is growing by the minute,
so I'll definitely take care when I'm out there
trying to get my own hands-on experience.
Man #8: Beware. Just be careful.
Eel wrestling is not a good sport for tourists.
Okay, thanks for the warning.
Stick to bungee jumping.
Going on the radio
has really helped me to tap into local knowledge
and very quickly get an accurate sense
of what this predator is capable of.
But since coming here,
I've also tracked down an old newspaper report
that describes a terrifying assault on a young girl.
This appears to be a very clear example
of an eel deliberately trying to kill a human.
In 1971, 8-year-old Carol Davis
wandered into a stream on her father's property.
For several days previously,
large eels had been attacking Mr. Davis's ducks.
Then, for reasons that aren't clear,
one of them decided to have a go at Carol.
The idea that an eel could drag a girl into deep water
is entirely possible.
This is a fish that can actually swim backwards
with real power.
Carol's horror story has really concentrated my mind.
Not only was she attacked in shallow water,
her ordeal also happened in broad daylight.
It makes me wonder what would happen to me
under similar conditions.
It's not just dark underground caves
where you find eels lurking.
I'm in a wildlife park
where I know there are half a dozen big longfins.
I'm not yet ready to try this out in the wild,
where, if things went wrong, I'd be miles from any help.
Nonetheless, there's no such thing as a tame eel,
and I've already heard enough to put me on edge.
Their mouths are lined
with hundreds of backward-pointing teeth,
and the ones in here are certainly big enough
to grab an ankle or a hand.
Aah!
I'm treading in sort of roots here.
The trouble is, they're gonna be lurking right in there.
I don't want to get my toes nipped.
After a couple of nervy encounters,
I decide to push my luck.
I've actually got one right here.
There we go.
Whew!
Short and dramatic.
That's my first real contact
with one of these big longfin eels.
Clearly, well-fed eels like these just aren't aggressive,
but I'm not fooling myself
they'll be so placid in the wild.
In New Zealand's South Island, I leave the beaten track
and push into the mountains.
Some of the biggest eels mentioned in historical records
were caught from deep lakes in the interior,
and this is where I'm focusing my search for a monster.
On Lake Manapouri,
in what feels like the middle of nowhere,
I first join Evan Brunton,
a man who tracks and catches eels for a living.
There are parts of this lake
that plunge to more than a quarter of a mile deep,
room enough for a monster to hide in, even today.
So we've actually got over 1,500 feet in the middle.
I mean, that's way deeper than Loch Ness.
1,500 feet's nothing for an eel.
The other night,
we were tracking eels at 2:00 in the morning,
and one eel was traveling right on the surface,
and the other eel was traveling at 150 meters,
which is 600 feet.
An eel could quite happily live at the bottom of this lake.
And do you think there are still big ones around?
Yes, there is a few big ones from time to time,
just seem to turn up out of the blue.
Evan calculates that some of the eels in this lake
are over 80 years old.
When you think about it, some of these eels
were 20 years old
at the outbreak of the Second World War.
Have you heard any stories
of aggressive or dangerous eels in your time?
A couple of people went missing in the Hidden Lakes of Tianya,
supposedly taken by monstrous eels.
You've only got to see the strength in them when they fight.
It'd be very, very hard for some people
to actually get up again,
especially if there was more than one of them.
People can fall over and knock themselves out, can't they?
At a secluded bay, we pull over to see
if anything large has turned up in Evan's nets.
Even here, the chances of finding a giant eel are slim,
but the 16-pounder that Evan hauls out
is still an impressive animal.
So powerful.
You can imagine that a 30-pound...
Could drag someone away.
There's some eels up in the
that have been up to 100 pound.
And they've been caught and reliably weighed?
- Yes, they have. - Gosh.
Evan's accounts of monstrous 100-pound eels
have got me itching to fish.
But first, there's a niggling question
at the back of my mind.
I can well believe that a massive eel
could seize someone and drag them under,
but with teeth designed to grip rather than cut,
I'm skeptical about whether it could actually
dismember and devour a person.
If Captain Cook's man-eater really is a huge longfin,
then this animal must have some other way to rip you apart.
To see how, I'm laying on a buffet.
A hunter has provided me with a deer carcass,
and I've brought along a high-tech box of tricks.
Underwater cameras placed around the bait
will give me separate views of the tail, throat, and stomach.
If any eels show up to feed,
I'll be able to see how they deal with something
that's too large to swallow whole.
The eels I've seen
got very powerful bodies and a very strong grip,
but how one of these animals, even if it was the 8-foot size
mentioned in Captain Cook's journal...
How that could devour a person
is still not immediately obvious.
With my surveillance cameras switched on,
I retreat to a makeshift control room.
The stage is set.
All I can do now is sit and wait.
For nearly two hours, nothing shows up.
If eels are sensitive to electricity then it could be
that my cameras are spooking them.
Or perhaps they're just biding their time until dark.
Suddenly they appear out of nowhere.
And like a pack of wolves they start to attack the carcass.
Straining to see in the pitch black,
I catch my first glimpse
of how these predators could rip you to shreds.
Here we go.
It's getting in there.
Yep, it's latching on. It's actually spinning.
It's spinning around.
These eels are feeding like crocodiles,
gripping the victim firmly
then spinning violently to twist off chunks of flesh.
It actually reminds me of this story that I've heard.
It's one of those stories
that I haven't been able to pin down where it happened, who to,
but a few people have told me this.
Somebody who was driving, supposedly had a few to drink...
It's said that the man swerved out of control
and crashed into a lake.
Unconscious and bleeding,
he would have been, quite literally,
a sitting target for marauding eels.
I've now seen with my own eyes how a pack of longfins
could make a real mess of someone,
given half a chance.
I've also tracked down credible stories of massive eels
living in New Zealand's remote backwaters,
yet, just when I'm ready to try and catch
one of these slippery monsters,
I run into an unexpected problem.
In wilderness areas like this,
fishing for eels with hooks is now strictly forbidden.
I've no choice but to give up my usual methods
and start from scratch.
Eel fisherman Vic Thompson is my teacher.
I'm gonna make a bob for you.
Simply find a bit of steak like that
or a bit of any red meat and cut it into a slim slice,
and I've got a bit of mackerel fish here,
which adds a bit of flavor.
You have a bit of wool,
just ordinary darning wool needle.
Thread through like that to start with.
Pull it right through.
And then you just wind this around like that.
After you've done the first layer like that,
you've got to put a loop on here to attach it to your line.
The theory is simple.
When the eel bites, its teeth get tangled in the wool.
I must then drag it ashore before it shakes itself free.
So, there you've got your loop on your bob.
Good bite size for an eel.
I guess the angler doesn't have...
The eel actually has the hook in this situation.
The eel has a lot of hooks in its mouth.
So they hook onto the wool.
Very low-tech, but very effective, by the sound of it.
Very effective.
It all sounds straightforward,
but as I head for a deserted spot in a deep water lake,
I'm not so sure.
The method I've just learned is a traditional Maori technique
known as toy, or bobbing.
One clear benefit, at least,
is that, with no hooks involved,
there's little danger
of spilling the eel's toxic blood,
assuming I can catch one.
Having cast my very first hookless bait,
I wait for a bite.
If anywhere has supersized eels
still prowling the depths,
it has to be a place like this.
Without a hook, though, I'm in virgin territory.
It feels like I've been disarmed.
It's still in the mouth. It's still in its mouth.
Look at that. Just came out.
Oop!
Come here.
There we go... My first fish on a bob.
The technique actually works, and it works for two reasons.
Bit of role reversal here.
Normally it's me providing the hook.
This eel has got hundreds of little hooks in its mouth
in the form of teeth,
and that's why it catches onto that bob.
It sort of hooks in.
The other thing is, it's a predator,
and so it thinks that bait is getting away,
so it hangs on, and if I'm quick about it,
it's up on the bank before it actually knows what's going on.
Okay. Ooh.
So, I'm putting you back. No need to struggle.
I'm actually putting you back.
Lovely. I've just caught a fish without using a hook.
It absolutely works.
Spurred on by my success,
I push further into even wilder backwaters,
to places where few people ever fish.
The eels here are as bold and as willing to strike
as any I've seen.
And with my bobbing skills improving fast,
I'm soon dragging them out at up to 4 feet long.
But I'm looking for a beast twice this size,
and time is running out.
If the animal described by Captain Cook really was an eel,
then, seemingly, the big ones are very rare
or even, perhaps, a thing of the past.
So far, the monster I've come in search of has eluded me,
but I still have some unfinished business
with the longfin eel
that may yet help me solve the mystery.
Just in my short time here,
I've been hearing a lot about their aggression.
I'm in no doubt that I'm dealing
with a very powerful and large animal.
There were those sheep dragged into the water and eaten alive,
and that was actually from somebody who saw that happening.
As for humans, we have a swimmer who was swimming without clothes
who had his private parts mauled,
and then there was the diver
having his ribs actually cracked.
And then, finally, that newspaper report
of a girl being dragged into the water.
But I have to admit,
there is still a grain of doubt in my mind.
To be totally convinced,
I need to see the proof for myself,
and there's only one way that I can do that.
My destination is a remote river
in the heart of a primeval wilderness.
I want to find out if wild longfin eels,
large or small,
are willing to attack a healthy adult human.
I've already been in the water with these animals in a zoo.
This time, it's going to be very different.
The place I've chosen is swarming with eels,
and because they're wild, they'll be hungry.
The question is,
will they be bold enough to have a crack at me?
To draw them in, I first soak my clothes with fish guts.
Put simply, I'm turning myself into human bait.
Ahh.
I feel my heart starting to pound.
I've done some crazy things in my time...
Getting into a pool with piranhas,
going into murky water after snakeheads,
but this has to be one of the scariest things I've done.
For protection, I'm wearing chain mail gloves
and a thick wet suit,
and I'll be sticking close to the bank.
Within minutes,
eels start to emerge from their hiding holes.
The question is, are any eels going to bite?
That is just so snakelike...
Coming out of the water with its mouth like that.
I'm hoping they're going for my hands,
but they seem to be interested in other parts of my clothing,
which is a bit disconcerting.
And even if I move...
If I move my legs, I move my hands...
It's not really sending them away at all.
They're coming right in close.
The thing about these fish...
These are not fish that people feed.
These are wild fish, so they are hungry.
They're bumping my legs, they're tugging at my shirt,
and they're coming in on my fingers, as well.
I'm actually wearing gloves... These are kevlar gloves,
and I wouldn't be too happy doing it without those.
Ah!
I do want to hold my ground. I mean, I've come this far.
I don't want to get out too... too quickly.
It's broad daylight, and from their point of view,
I'm a big animal, but they're totally unfazed.
Get out! No!
I'll need kevlar underpants, as well.
Most fish would not do this at all, even piranhas.
Ow!
That was inside of the thigh, inside of the thigh.
What I don't want is for them to draw blood.
If they draw blood, that could really get them going.
Ah!
That is one aggressive fish.
Ah! Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!
Look at that! Look at that!
Ah!
I think it's time for me to get out. Get out. Get out.
I came here wondering
if the monster described so long ago by Captain Cook
was, in fact, a giant eel.
Short of seeing an 8-footer, I can't be sure.
Yet it's clear to me that, without protective clothing,
these eels would have ripped into my flesh
and tried to eat me alive.
And with this animal, it isn't just about size.
Slip and fall over in some lonely river,
and it's the hungry pack that could seal your fate.