Why is Jeremy Wade afraid to pee in the river? Hint: there's one creature that creeps him out
more than any other. Keep watching to find out the untold truth of River Monsters.
What started out as a childhood hobby turned into a lifelong passion for “River Monsters"
host Jeremy Wade. Speaking with Wanderlust, he revealed that he learned how to fish from a
friend and subsequently started angling in the local waterways of his rural English hometown.
When the hobby became too popular locally, Wade took a three-month trip to India — the
first of his many international fishing excursions. After the trip,
Wade longed to explore other remote areas for fish, which led to a period of simple
living and working odd jobs until he'd saved just enough for his next journey.
Wade even nearly died from malaria during one trip on the Congo River,
yet he returned to the same area multiple times. Eventually, his personal passion
for traveling and catching strange fish led to the opportunity to do it for a living.
"While I was doing that, I just became aware that, you know, there must be some TV potential here."
After a producer saw a newspaper photo of Wade holding a huge fish from the Amazon, he got his
first shot — a 2002 documentary called "Jungle Hooks." A few years later, Wade got the green
light for a limited series that eventually caught the eye of Animal Planet. The rest is history.
Jeremy Wade often talks about one of his favorite catches being the Goliath
tigerfish, which is a kind of giant piranha only found in the Congo River that can weigh
over 100 pounds. In an interview with The Telegraph, he revealed that he traveled to
the region three times over a six-year period -– before "River Monsters" –- before he caught one,
but it wasn't as big as he'd hoped. And it certainly wasn't enough for the guy who'd
eventually build his career on hooking the biggest, rarest fish in the world.
The show returned to the Congo River in its second season, when he ended up hooking a 78-pounder,
which Wade said was the prize he'd been after for nearly 25 years. But for a man like Wade,
the thrill of the hunt is never over. He told Outside Online:
"I find that I catch a fish and my thought is…'great, I've done that!'
but immediately, I know there are bigger ones out there."
When "River Monsters" started, it would have been hard to imagine the phenomenon it quickly became.
Jeremy Wade surely had a good number of ideas for episodes based on his own research and study,
but with the series eventually going nine seasons, a lot more creatures got added to the list.
Later on, the show even dipped into more sensational waters with its Chernobyl and Loch
Ness Monster episodes. Instead of riding things out until low ratings or a lack of ideas forced
the show off the air, Wade and his team decided to hang it up once they felt they'd wrangled every
river monster out there. In a press release announcing the end of the series, he wrote:
"Some shows can run forever, but our subject matter is finite. Ten years ago,
I had a list in my head, which seemed impossibly ambitious at the time,
but everything has now been ticked off -– and then some."
Over the course of his adventurous life, Jeremy Wade has contracted malaria,
had a gun pulled on him, and been interrogated by authorities on suspicion of spying –- and
that's all before "River Monsters" even began. Since then, he's been bitten, jabbed,
and rammed in the chest by an 80-pound arapaima in the Amazon so hard that his heart was bruised.
"Honestly I was still feeling that after six weeks, it was such a solid blow."
Crew members on the show were even struck by lightning in one episode.
But when asked by Wanderlust to pinpoint the biggest danger of his adventures,
Wade had a surprising answer that had nothing to do with the water. He said:
"The thing that I worry most about is road traffic.
Indian mountain roads, for instance. No tread on the tyre, a driver whose
belief is that it is karma that will decide his fate, not the state of his vehicle."
Granted, from the man who voluntarily attached a bloodsucking lamprey to his
own neck, it kind of makes sense that Wade's personal bogeymen aren't aquatic.
During a Reddit AMA, Jeremy Wade revealed that he's most creeped out by the Candiru.
This is the fish that legends say swims up the urethra and can only be removed by surgery.
"Spreads its thorny little spines, refuses to budge."
"Ouch."
"You have to cut it out."
"That's sick, man."
That’s right – it’s a small parasitic catfish that latches onto the gills of
host fish by spreading out little spines, then feeds on their blood. Wade reiterated
his revulsion for the little Amazon parasite on an episode of "River Monsters," saying:
"It's one of the most disgusting fish I've had to get to grips with."
It's easy to assume that the demographic
watching fishing shows like "River Monsters" would be primarily male.
"Let's go fishing."
However, that's not as accurate as you might think when it comes to the Animal Planet show.
According to a Chicago Sun-Times report from 2012, the series' audience was 40 percent female.
Though that number might sound surprising at first, it shouldn't necessarily be a shock. Modern
data from Statista shows that close to 40 percent of fishing participants in the U.S. are women.
Wade also did a fabulous job as the host of "River Monsters,"
creating a tone that was widely accessible. Wade himself has expressed
a humble perspective on the show's broad appeal, telling Real Screen:
"We decided early on to go at this as a bit of a detective story. We're also showcasing
different areas of the world and different people, which audiences are interested in."
Given that many "River Monsters" filming locations are incredibly remote, the danger
posed by injuries is heightened beyond your average reality show.
"It's those random things out of the environment, of which the ones that can catch you unaware."
In his Reddit AMA, Jeremy Wade explained that because episodes were often filmed far from
civilization, both he and the crew were trained for hazardous situations. He said
they always carried emergency medical kits, along with a satellite phone.
That all makes sense, given the circumstances, and the training has certainly come in handy
time and again. But in the same post, Wade then tacked on this little tidbit of info:
"And the production company always asks two questions on the rare occasions we call
them if there is an emergency. Question one: is everybody okay? Question two,
immediately afterwards: did you film it?"
Over its eight-year run, "River Monsters" sought out scores of wild, bizarre creatures. But of all
Wade's finds, the single most surprising was a marooned sailor on an unpopulated island.
"And the next thing we knew, there was a guy looking rather sort of wild and ragged
staggering down the beach towards us."
While filming the Season 8 episode "Death Down Under" in Northern Territory, Australia,
Wade and crew spotted something unusual, even for them: A blue and white cooler sitting
on an otherwise uninhabited island. Then, the team spotted its owner — a sunburned,
dehydrated fisherman who, upon spotting the team, yelled out desperately for water.
The man was later identified as a local fisherman. He told the crew that he had
lost track of his boat while hunting for oysters on the small island. As Wade notes in the episode,
the area's average daily temperature hovers around 100 degrees Fahrenheit,
and the extreme heat had taken a toll. The "River Monsters" crew were able to rehydrate him,
rescue him, and bring him back to civilization for medical treatment.
Water levels greatly affected Jeremy Wade's ability to find and catch monsters of the deep. In
fact, in a chat with The Big Lead, Wade explained that there are certain times of the year when
fish are so spread out due to high flood waters that quote, “They can be impossible to find."
Some of that predictably has to do with climate change,
which Wade once said made the annual river cycle "unpredictable" in more recent times.
Of course, rising global temperatures have other detrimental effects on aquatic wildlife as well.
You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that the "River Monsters" production team didn't
have it easy. An average episode consists almost entirely of Wade spending countless hours angling
and baiting, all while cameramen work in the same conditions to capture every precious shot.
"We get maybe one chance, with one massive fish,
that after maybe a week of trying Jeremy pulls in."
Many episodes of "Rivers Monsters" took a heavy toll on the crew's time, money,
sanity, and even safety. As Wade has explained, each episode of the show
took around three weeks to shoot. That length may already surprise,
but what's perhaps more surprising is that out of those three weeks, according to Wade:
"Only about three or four days, normally, are spent fishing."
That leaves around 18 days during which the crew would focus on non-fishing hurdles,
and there were hurdles aplenty. For example, director Kelly Neaves has detailed a few such
issues that the crew faced while searching for Humboldt squid in Peru. The challenges
included a boat too small for the crew, a language barrier between crew and guides, ocean sickness,
lack of safety precautions, and even the threat of pirates. And that's just one episode.
Despite the numerous monsters that have taken a bite out of Jeremy Wade,
he's not a vengeful man. Wade has always conducted himself as a biologist and researcher first,
and an angler only as a secondary necessity. To that end, Wade doesn't keep trophies from
his catches, even the incredible ones, and he avoids eating fish for the most part.
During his AMA on Reddit, Wade revealed his sustainability-based policy when it comes to
piscivory, saying that he only eats fish if there's no threat to their population.
He explained the choice further to Page Six, saying:
"It's sort of out of conscience. […] I like to eat sustainably produced fish where possible."
For the same reason, Wade isn't interested in keeping fish as trophies. His angling
expeditions are meant to educate and assess local ecosystems, which is why almost every
"River Monsters" catch can be seen on camera swimming away after its brief run-in with Wade.
To supplement his on-site adventures with at-home education,
Wade also frequently lectures about conservation at universities and scientific conferences.
Speaking with The Guardian, Wade expanded on his education and conservation efforts, saying:
"There has been a marked decline in fish sizes over the last few years.
I've witnessed that myself and [by] talking to people."
"These are large animals, some of them larger than people, and they're disappearing before our eyes."
He said that his preferred catch-and-release approach is, quote, "the only way that freshwater
fish stand a chance, worldwide." Given that Wade is such a dedicated biologist,
it makes sense that he cares so deeply about all other elements of the planet's health as well.
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