I'm jeremy wade, extreme angler and freshwater detective.
Fish on!
For years, i've been tracking down creatures
That are normally hidden.
Large or small,
It's their ability to inflict lethal damage that interests me.
And now, from the heart of southeast asia,
Come reports of an unseen mutilator
That's leaving a trail of disfigured victims.
But what animal could possibly be behind these attacks?
He just bled until he died.
To find out, i'm heading to a place
That suffered unimaginable horror...
And to a river that harbors
More than its fair share of monsters.
— captions by vitac — www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
It flows like the amazon of southeast asia —
A huge river whose waters are still yielding animals
New to science.
Rising on the tibetan plateau,
The mekong river slices down through indochina
And into a country that, for many years,
Was off limits to outsiders.
Cambodia was once at the heart of a powerful medieval empire —
An empire whose overgrown ruins are covered with images of
Freshwater giants.
These carvings at the centuries old temple
At angkor show fish so big, they can swallow deer hole,
And so plentiful that
Boats can't avoid bumping into them.
And it's from these monster-Filled waters
That i've heard reports
Of a creature that's mutilating both bathers
And fishermen.
There are multiple cases,
But one story is particularly gruesome.
A teenage boy was checking his fishing net
When he felt a sudden pain in his groin.
Blood started gushing from the wound, and when
He got out of the water, he discovered that he
Was missing part of his genitals.
He'd been sliced as if by some kind of blade.
The culprit, unseen.
The details are vague,
But i've come across incidents like this before.
In papua new guinea,
The normally vegetarian pacu introduced from the amazon
Became known as the ball cutter
When it appeared to have developed an appetite
For human testicles.
And i can't rule out the possibility of something larger.
In argentina, the golden dorado
Was guilty of a similarly gruesome attack on a young boy.
But as far as i know, neither of these fish
Nor anything like them is found in cambodia.
So i'm not sure quite what i'll find.
My investigation begins in cambodia's capital, phnom penh.
I've arrived just after the cambodian new year.
39 years ago, new year was marked by the arrival
Here in the city of the khmer rouge.
It was the start of one of the bloodiest mass murders
In recent history.
Over the next four years,
Well over a million people died —
Around a quarter of the country's population.
Wherever i look,
There are grim reminders of that brutal period.
I'm seeing people here and there with missing limbs.
Now, these people are probably the victims of land mines.
During its time in power,
The khmer rouge buried untold numbers of these explosives.
Unfortunately, many of them are still in the ground,
Especially in the rural areas where i expect to be going.
This is phnom penh's oldest market
And a clearinghouse for fish from right across the country.
I'm here to see if i can spot anything
That's equipped to slice through human flesh.
So, this one?
Okay, right.
Now, i just asked for the name of the fish,
And she just tells me the price.
I recognize this one. This one's still alive.
This is a snakehead.
They've got quite a bite on them,
But those teeth, they don't slice.
The action is more like a saw.
When the fish shakes its head, that will cut through flesh.
It doesn't slice.
The injuries i've heard about were clean and surgical.
Not one of these i'm looking for.
There are certainly things here that can bite.
What name this one?
But nothing that looks like it could inflict a sharp,
Knife-Like wound.
Is there any big animal here with teeth?
He says there's crocodiles here.
Now, crocodiles have immensely powerful jaws,
But their teeth rip and tear.
They don't really cut.
I look instead for a lead to anyone
Who might have been attacked.
Do you know any story of any —
Any person being bitten in the water here?
She says the only fish that she knows about
That will bite people is the snakehead.
That's — that's all she can tell me.
The market has provided neither suspects nor victims.
Yet, it's clear that most of the fish
Here come from cambodia's more remote backwaters.
So, if i'm going to find the culprit,
I need to leave the city and head upriver.
Though cambodia is new to me, i have been on the mekong before.
Further upriver, i had an experience i'd rather forget.
I'm always a little bit uneasy in the remoter corners
Of this part of the world.
It was on this river where it forms the border
Between thailand and laos
That i was arrested as a suspected spy.
I actually had to leave the country as quickly as possible.
That happened in 1984,
And it's a very different place today.
But even so, i still find it very hard
To get completely comfortable in this place.
These waters are more treacherous than they look.
Whirlpools can whip up in an instant,
And anchoring in the strong current is next to impossible.
Our only option is to tie up
To one of the concrete channel markers
That stick up like tombstones.
In this water, any predator is likely to be lying deep
And using the current to its advantage.
All right, this actually feels quite good.
There's water rushing by on either side.
There's a — there's a very dramatic dropoff.
It goes from about 12 foot down to 60.
It's a kind of place where fish would come in,
Expecting food items to settle in the current.
To make sure my line sinks in these fast-Flowing waters,
I need to attach a lot of weight,
So i'm improvising with some
Lumps of scrap metal.
With a bit of luck,
That will hold bottom.
I'm attaching that to a relatively thin bit of line
So that if this does get caught up on anything, what will break
Will be this and not my main line.
This feels good.
The bait is on the bottom.
It's in the kind of place where a predator might be waiting.
The water's too deep and too murky to see anything,
So fishing is the only way i can find out what's down there.
I'm told as well as fish,
There's unexploded bombs in this river.
Nobody quite knows how many, nobody quite knows where.
It was during the vietnam war that thousands
Of tons of explosives ended up in the mekong.
And it's entirely possible that live bombs
Are still littering the riverbed beneath me.
That's something on. That's something on.
Whatever's attached to the end of my line,
It certainly feels heavy.
I wonder if it's a stingray.
Yeah, it's coming up, whatever it is.
Whatever's on the end is about to break the surface.
In cambodia, i'm on the hunt for a creature
That's been mutilating bathers and fishermen, and i've hooked
Something big from the bottom of the mekong...
It's coming in. Whatever it is, it's coming in.
A river that's peppered with unexploded bombs.
Whatever's on the end is about to break the surface.
It's a tree. It's a tree.
I have actually caught trees before,
But i have to say, it's probably the first time
I've been pleased to see that that
Was all it was on the end of the line.
There's unexploded bombs scattered around.
If one of those came and happened to go off,
I could lose an arm or a leg or even worse.
I continue fishing the river,
But with the same frustrating result.
The strong current is constantly sweeping debris along the bottom
And into my line.
I hook branch after branch, but not a single fish.
This bait is completely intact.
Nothing has gone for this at all the whole time
It's been in the water.
It's unusual to fish for so long without getting anything.
With this stretch of river seemingly empty of fish,
I need to switch tactics.
Maybe if i can track down a victim,
I'll pick up a clue that'll help me identify the unseen attacker.
Do you know any cases
Of anybody being attacked by something in the water?
Nothing here? Nothing here?
Okay, all right.
The mekong is an aquatic highway
That connects hundreds of riverside communities,
And information spreads rapidly up
And down its banks.
If there have been attacks nearby,
The chances are that somebody will have heard about them.
Hello.
I've asked river people all over the world
About tragic accidents,
But i feel uneasy doing so here...
Sir, could i carry on?
Where over a million people were systematically murdered
By a cruel regime.
Eventually, a man named mr. Lun tells me about his brother.
His brother was out fishing with a friend close to their village
And managed to spear a fish from his boat.
But when he tried to retrieve it,
Something in the water attacked him.
When he came back up,
His face was streaming with blood on one side.
And when they actually got him back into the boat
And cleared everything up,
Part of his ear had been completely removed.
I'm struck by a particular detail,
One that's consistent with the other stories i've heard.
His brother's butchered ear looked as though
It had been surgically sliced with a sharp blade.
Mr. Lun's account is confirmation that these waters
Are home to an animal that cuts through flesh,
But what is it?
There is one avenue i haven't yet explored.
Often, local knowledge is enshrined in folklore.
Perhaps there are clues buried in the mythology
Of this ancient land.
Buddhism is central to cambodian culture,
And it also has an intimate connection with nature.
If anyone has special knowledge of the river's inhabitants,
It may be the local monks.
In this riverside temple, dragons, multi-Headed cobras
And all manner of strange-Looking beasts
Stare back at me from
Every wall and pillar.
Could one of them, i wonder,
Have any connection with a real flesh-And-Blood creature?
When i ask brother tangvuti,
He describes an animal from the river that does,
Indeed, have a nasty bite.
The local name means nothing to me,
But bizarrely, i'm told that they actually keep
One of these mysterious beasts right next to the temple.
According to tangvuti,
The creature's bite is powerful enough to crush bone
Or remove a finger, so our bare-Footed approach
Seems nothing short of reckless.
I saw something under the — it's here.
In cambodia, my search for a mysterious river monster
That's been mutilating fishermen
Has brought me to a buddhist temple
Decorated with strange beasts.
And one of the monks now wants to show me an animal
That can apparently crush bone...
It's here.
And chop off fingers.
I see nothing at all.
When the monk reveals the beast,
I recognize it as something i've tangled with before.
A massive, soft-Shelled turtle.
He's very similar to one that i saw in india,
And that one nearly took my hand off.
So i'm being quite wary with this.
It's got very sharp claws,
But it's the beak i've got to watch.
It's made up of razor-Edged blades,
And a turtle's bite really is strong enough to break bone.
It's almost like bolt cutters.
I mean, you really wouldn't want
To get anywhere within range of that at all.
This cambodian species can grow bigger than me,
But even a small one could inflict a crippling wound.
So, this thing —
You'd never know it was there.
Be very easy to blunder into it.
And if you came within range of that mouth,
It could do some serious damage.
However, the very reason turtles are kept here tells me
That they can't possibly be the animal i'm after.
This is actually a breeding program
Aimed at saving the species from extinction.
The fact is, these turtles are now simply too rare
To be behind the multiple attacks i've heard about...
Which means i'm still looking for a suspect.
This is turning out
To be one of my most perplexing investigations.
Few rivers have proved so unwilling
To give up their secrets.
But i'm not about to quit.
And the monk's efforts to save the turtles
Have given me another idea.
There's a place i know where i can quickly get a look
At what else is lurking beneath the mekong's murky surface.
It's a lake across the border where not one,
But many of the mekong's monsters are protected.
I want to see if any of them could leave the signature wounds
Of the mysterious attacker.
It's barely five minutes before something bites one of my baits.
Something's on the float.
And from the way it's taken off,
I can tell it's big.
Every time it comes close to the surface,
It takes fright and goes down again.
There it is.
This is only a small one.
Siamese carp are said to grow nearly ten feet long
And reach over 600 pounds.
Just hoping the fish stays calm for a second.
There we go.
It's got a very upward turned mouth, this fish, though.
No surprise that it took a bait
In the middle of the water column.
It's got plenty of weight to throw around,
Yet its rubbery mouth is completely toothless.
So no way that this could slice through anything or anybody.
Just a really —
What i was gonna say is "a really pretty fish."
This vegetarian lacks the hardware
To make it onto my suspect list.
I'm upping my game.
Maybe a showering of meaty smelling fish pellets
Will tempt a flesh eater onto my line.
It's another bite,
And this beast feels much bigger than the last one.
It's going the entire length of the lake.
To keep the line clear of snags,
I have to get in the water.
It's heavy. It's not wanting to show itself.
I keep thinking it's nearly ready,
And then it just goes off again.
Could this heavyweight,
Perhaps, be the mekong's mysterious mutilator?
I'm on the hunt
For a monster that's stalking cambodia's mekong river,
Slicing chunks off fishermen.
After a week of searching,
I've yet to come up with a suspect.
But in a lake where the mekong's largest fish
Are protected,
I'm hoping to find a beast that fits the bill.
And something big has just taken off with my bait.
As long as my feet are firmly planted...
Okay. I'm not in danger.
I'm gonna come back a bit.
But one more powerful wrench on my line,
And the fish has the advantage.
I'm just touching the ground.
It takes 40 minutes of back-Breaking struggle
Before i start to gain the upper hand.
I can't see the fish.
There's the fish on the surface.
This is one of the biggest freshwater fish
On the planet.
Ah.
Large mekong catfish.
Very hard to hold up, very heavy,
But also just incredibly powerful.
I can't think of any other fish this size
Which is this powerful,
And one of the reasons is this huge tail here.
But it's also all the muscle that powers that,
And there were a couple of moments
I thought i might go under and be towed
Into the middle of the lake.
Mekong giant catfish can grow to well over 600 pounds,
But there's no way this fish is capable of tearing into a human.
I can't see any teeth,
And if i put my hand in there,
There's nothing at all.
So although it took some very strongly flavored fish bait,
Which is quite unusual for one of these,
Which is normally a herbivore, vegetarian,
There's no way this can cut or slice anything or anybody.
Despite its size,
This giant is no more a suspect than a toothless carp
Or an endangered turtle.
I fish here for a further two days,
But it becomes apparent that this lake has no more clues
To offer me.
The only way to move my investigation forward
Is to track down a victim on the mekong.
I return to the village where mr. Lun's brother
Was attacked and start working my way upriver.
Yeah.
Do you know anything about anybody in the water
Being bitten by anything?
I know there's something here that bites through flesh.
But what is it and where on this river can i find it?
My perseverance eventually pays off.
You're saying —
Although this man has not been attacked himself,
He gives me the name of someone
Who has and tells me where i can find him.
The victim is a young man named sok heng,
And he lives in the slum area known as kandal.
A lot of people in this area
Live on less than a dollar a day,
And it's not often that outsiders show up.
I'm not sure if i'll be welcome.
But when i find him at his family home,
Sok agrees to tell me his story.
So, can you tell me exactly what happened to you?
Listening to his account,
It soon becomes clear that this must be the very attack
That brought me to cambodia.
It was just outside the back of the house here,
And he was wearing a sort of a wraparound,
A bit like a sarong, i think, called a krama.
Many fishermen wear kramas in the water...
But they leave the flesh beneath exposed and vulnerable.
Sok was checking the nets
That he'd set alongside a floating house...
When he felt a sudden, sharp pain in his groin.
It was only when he got to the hospital
That he discovered the horrifying extent of his injury.
He says it was a clean cut,
No ragged edges at all,
And it actually cleanly removed part of his testicle,
And it happened in a fraction of a second.
Sok did not see his attacker.
It vanished as quickly as it had struck.
Whatever this was,
It just bit him and then disappeared.
I retrace sok's footsteps down to the river's edge.
There is just so much stuff in the water.
There's weed, but there's also branches.
There's old boats. There's cable.
The trash-Strewn attack site immediately
Starts to shape my thinking about the perpetrator.
To infiltrate these congested, debris-Filled waters,
The attacker must either have been small
Like a piranha or possibly snake-Like.
Anything bulky would quickly get caught up in all the nets
And other obstacles.
So what could have cruelly emasculated the boy?
Fish don't have to be huge to inflict serious damage.
The red-Bellied piranha,
Arguably one of the world's most voracious freshwater predators
Is proof of that.
Could the mekong's unseen mutilator
Also be something small, but equally savage?
I've come out to slightly deeper water
Where i'm hoping to fish without getting snagged.
All right, i'm pretty certain that what i'm after
Is not particularly large,
So i'm not having to use very heavy gear here.
However, if it is capable of slicing through flesh
In the way that i've heard,
Then that would make very short work
Of normal fishing lines,
So i'm using wire next to the hook.
Basically, similar to what i'd use for piranhas,
And it shouldn't be able to bite through that.
This time, i know i'm in the right place,
But the river still refuses to offer anything up.
In the end, it's not the water but my boatman, cosen,
Who provides me with the crucial lead i'm looking for.
He tells me about an animal
That's been slicing his fishing nets clean through.
This is actually quite strong material.
It's almost like it's gone through
With scissors or clippers, something like that.
Something very sharp.
It's not torn. It's cut.
He then brings out something that i wasn't expecting.
The skeleton of one of the very fish
That's been shredding his nets.
It's identity is unmistakable.
This is a freshwater puffer fish.
Named for its ability to puff itself up when threatened,
It has a deceptively friendly appearance.
It is, in fact,
One of the world's most poisonous animals.
The paralyzing toxins in its body
Are deadlier than cyanide
And can kill a person in just 20 minutes.
But to get a lethal dose, you'd have to eat it.
Until now, i never thought this fish
Would actually go for people.
Yet, looking at its jaws,
I can see how it could cut chunks
Out of a much larger animal, piranha style.
Although this is quite a small specimen,
This apparatus here is really serious.
Its four blade-Like teeth
Come together like a miniature guillotine.
Cosen tells me that his nets were shredded not here,
But in a distant lake called tonle sap,
Where the waters are apparently swarming with puffer fish.
By now, word of my investigation has spread,
And before i even leave the slums of kandal,
I'm approached by a man named sam al,
Who has a story of his own to tell me.
He vividly recalls being attacked by a puffer fish
When he was a child.
This is when he was about 14 years old,
And he was with a couple of friends in the river here.
As he ducked under the surface,
The fish struck his face without warning.
He bled a lot.
His father came, stopped the bleeding,
And he's practically blind in that eye now.
He goes on to tell me about another,
Much more disturbing attack.
I can only hope i'm not the next victim.
On the mekong river in cambodia, i'm on the trail of a creature
That has apparently been mutilating people for decades.
And my investigation has led me to a surprising culprit.
Like the voracious piranha,
The tiny freshwater puffer fish punches well above its weight.
Sam al's right eye
Bears the scars of a childhood encounter with this fish.
But he knows of an even more serious assault.
I thought being bitten on the eye,
Being practically blinded was bad,
But this was a vietnamese man who was in the water.
He had gone to check his fish traps
When something unseen sank its teeth into one of his legs.
Though he made it to shore,
The blood loss was so severe that he bled to death.
He says he actually saw the body,
And what's interesting is his description of the wound —
Clean wound that must have just gone so deep
That it went through an artery.
My guess is that the bite
Actually severed the victim's popliteal artery
Which runs behind the knee.
From the injuries,
Witnesses had no doubt that his killer was a puffer fish.
And in this case,
It was the fish's teeth, not its poison,
That proved fatal.
Sam al confirms what the boatman has already told me,
That the best place to catch these fish is at tonle sap lake.
Connected by a channel to the mekong,
Tonle sap is the largest natural lake in southeast asia.
In the wet season,
It swells to over 4,000 square miles.
The huge quantity of fish here
Makes it vital to millions of people.
More than three-Quarters of the country's inland catch
Comes from this one lake,
Which is known locally as cambodia's beating heart.
And it's not long before stories of puffer fish attacks
Are coming thick and fast.
He says not only are they here,
People are getting bitten.
They're getting bitten all the time —
On average, about five people a day —
And he says in the last couple of months, you know,
This particular season, about 100 people.
Almost every household i visit has suffered from the attentions
Of this prolific mutilator.
This man has a very ugly wound on his arm.
He said it happened just 10 days ago.
He says he literally had to tear the puffer fish off.
This lake appears to be plagued by these serial attackers,
And for the people here, there's no escape.
Their survival depends on getting into the water.
And every time they do so,
It's a gamble whether they'll emerge unscathed.
Maybe it's here that i'll finally be able to tempt
One of these baby-Faced killers onto my line.
Well, there's no interest in my bait at all.
The thing is, i know they're down here.
People have been bitten in just the last few days,
But they're not going for my bait.
I've been assuming that all the attacks
I've heard about were attempts to feed, to take a mouthful.
But maybe these fish only bite in self-Defense,
When they're disturbed.
If that's the case,
I can probably sit here for as long as i like,
And i'm not gonna catch anything.
It seems the only way i'm going to see this animal
Is to hook up with some locals...
And fish with a net.
These people are all too familiar
With the puffer fish menace.
When i ask, they agree to let me join them
For the rest of the day.
This guy, he's just showing me
What looks like a very fresh bite.
Sometimes, they bite through the net.
If you're handling them, and you're not very careful,
They'll bite you.
They're in the process at the moment
Of just paying out the net.
One of the two boats just pays that out in a circle,
And then gradually, they'll gather that in.
And the bit that i'm interested in is seeing
What has become concentrated in the middle of that net.
But puffer fish aren't the only things around here that bite.
These murky waters are teeming with aquatic hunters.
We have a snake in the net.
That was actually underneath my feet.
I could actually feel something moving at some point.
I just assumed it was a fish.
It's at this point that something unpleasant
Dawns on me.
Retrieving the net requires getting into the water.
In the snake-Infested waters of tonle sap,
I've joined forces with a family of fishermen.
I'm hoping to see a fish
That's been busy biting chunks out of people here.
But to stop our net from snagging on submerged branches,
It's necessary to jump in.
And it's become clear that i'm not here just to watch.
I didn't actually realize that this was going
To be part of the deal.
Sign language — i was just told,
"get in the water."
If, as i now suspect, the puffer fish
Are biting in self-Defense,
Then corralling them in a net is just about
The last thing i should be doing.
I'm starting to wonder if i'll be the next victim.
Something just got me. Something just got me.
I don't know what that was.
I mean, that could have been a catfish spine or something.
With the net freed from snags,
It's time to haul it in and find out what we've caught.
There's a huge variety of fish,
But only one of them interests me.
This is something different. This is something different.
This is the fish, they tell me,
That's been biting people here.
Behind its harmless appearance,
This pint-Sized animal packs some vicious weaponry.
This is not a fish to be trifled with.
I'm just being very careful here.
Just hoping he doesn't move suddenly.
I can see very clearly now those mouth parts.
Now that i've got one,
I want to test its bite.
Oh!
That was a very graphic demonstration.
That's almost cut that fish in half.
It's actually gone through the backbone.
This fish has a piranha-Like ability
To slice off bits of flesh in the blink of an eye.
And looking at that,
That triangular wound, i'm left of no doubt
That if any part of me were to touch those jaws, it
Would just slice it clean through.
And this one is not alone.
In just 20 minutes, we've pulled up dozens of them.
It's all adding up.
You rarely find puffer fish in the market.
Because of their deadly toxins,
They're left in the water where they're multiplying unchecked.
There are now swarms of these potentially dangerous fish
Swimming right under people's feet.
From everything i've heard and now seen,
I'm left in very little doubt
That a bite from a puffer fish can be every bit as severe
As a bite from a piranha.
The mekong, it turns out,
Is a minefield in more ways than one.
You never know what your next step could bring.