A MAN ON A ‘MIGHTY’ MISSION
In his new TV series ‘Mighty Rivers’, Jeremy Wade reveals how we can all help reverse the decline in some of the world’s most iconic river fish
Extreme angler Jeremy Wade is set to return to the nation’s tV screens in the New Year with a brandnew series called Jeremy Wade’s mighty rivers.
After nine seasons of his incredibly popular River Monsters programmes, the globetrotting rod’s new venture looks at the state of big-fish populations in six of the world’s largest waterways.
Jeremy has been tracking down freshwater monsters for the past 35 years, but on each trip he has found that the giants he seeks are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Discovering why is the main thrust of the new six-part series, which will air on ITV1 and ITV4..
Viewers will see Jeremy travel to some of the planet’s biggest rivers and, helped by the people that live along their banks, try to find out whether they are approaching ‘the point of no return’. Angling Times interviewed Jeremy to pick his brains about the new show, discuss the issues affecting our planet’s principal river systems, and find out a bit more about his own personal fishing...
AT: River Monsters was incredibly popular and taught us a lot about the world’s biggest fish and the rivers they inhabit. What will viewers learn from Mighty Rivers? JW: River Monsters gave the impression that everywhere you go there are huge fish capable of biting your leg off. The reality is that giant fish are now restricted to very few places. They’ve largely disappeared from the main rivers. These iconic species are apex predators, and indicators of the health of the whole food pyramid and the overall health of their home river. I try to unpack what this means by hunting for huchen in the Danube, giant Chinese paddlefish in the Yangtze and lake sturgeon in the Mississippi, while meeting a diverse bunch of people who are fighting a rearguard action to protect the water that we all depend on.
AT: What do you think will be most eye-opening aspect of Mighty Rivers for viewers? JW: Everything about China. I consider myself pretty well informed about the world, but China was full of surprises. For example, what happens if you protest against a dam on the
“These iconic species are apex predators, and as such they are indicators of the health of the whole food pyramid and the overall health of their home river”
Yangtze, and make your point by kidnapping some engineers? The answer is not what you’d think.
AT: What would you say are the biggest factors adversely effecting these river systems? Are they local or global issues that need addressing? JW: Over-fishing, pollution and disruption of the natural flow by dams and other engineering are the main problems. These are global issues, but there are local versions of each and local ways of addressing them. One of the things I hope the programmes will do is help some of these local solutions get a global airing. For example, the ground-breaking way of dealing with water pollution in India.
AT: What was the first sign that these big river fish were disappearing? Were prolific fishing hotspots no longer producing the goods to locals? JW: I’ve been travelling to farflung waters for 35 years now, on and off. Part of my research involves digging around in old books and newspapers, and talking to the ‘old-timers’ in the places I visit. There’s a massive database of information out there, but most of it is oral — nobody has collected it and written it down. The pieces that I have collected show a consistent pattern: big river fish have all but disappeared in the past 100 years or so. If something like this happened to big land animals people would be jumping up and down, but because fish live their lives unseen very few people know or care about this.
AT: How important are these huge river fish to the habitat or environment they live in? JW: If their disappearance were just down to over-fishing, the relevance to us would be limited. But it goes beyond that. They are the ‘canary in the coal mine’. We also depend on clean water, and if fish disappear we should be worried. The presence of big fish is important because it reassures us that the water is healthy.
AT: Are there environmental issues in the UK that could pose a threat to our own specimen fish? JW: Definitely. There should be stronger protection against pollution, farm slurry in particular. Recent cuts to the Environment Agency were also not good news for rivers. It’s time we stopped looking the other way and addressed the whole question of soil runoff and denuded uplands.
AT: Was there one location that you felt needed attention more than anywhere else? JW: The fish have already pretty much already all gone from the Yangtze River in China. The challenge is whether new regulations surrounding pollution and other issues will bring some of them back again.
Have we gone past the point of no return, do you think? JW: It is pretty late in the day, and
the decline has been very rapid. Doing something about it starts with being informed, which is an uphill struggle in today’s climate of misinformation. We have our own problems, on a smaller scale, here in the UK, which is why all British anglers should support the Angling Trust, which goes after polluters via its ‘Fish Legal’ arm.
AT: The show isn’t just about fishing, it’s about the beauty of the wild environment as a whole. If there was one river from the show that you could return to fish again, which one would it be? JW: The main River Ganges in India. The water quality is pretty hideous, but there are places up its tributaries, in the mountains, that are absolutely sublime. One place I fished in the series is protected by a catch-and-release angling operation. But moves are afoot to ban angling there because of the belief that it is cruel to fish. If this stretch loses its protection, it’s likely somebody will pay a visit to the pools and kill the fish with dynamite or insecticide. AT: You used many modes of transport, from kayaks to helicopters, during the making of Mighty Rivers – did you have any hairy moments along the way? JW: We had an interesting time getting on to a mud airstrip in the Amazon. The cloud started at ground level and there were hills all around, so we spent ages tightly circling, waiting for the crosswinds to blow a hole in the cloud that we could dive through. When we finally landed, I was tempted to kneel down and kiss the ground, but our priority at that point was running to get out of the torrential downpour. It was scary for us, but those pilots do that kind of thing all the time.
AT: Were there any particularly memorable big fish caught during the making of Mighty Rivers? JW: We certainly landed a few that will impress viewers… but I don’t want to spoil the surprise! There are also numerous other fish that we saw and some that we caught in unconventional ways, some of which are pretty staggering.
AT: You must’ve encountered some dangerous animals during the making of the series? JW: We had to keep an eye on the crocodiles along parts of the Zambezi, and I had a very close encounter with a hippo. These kill more people than crocs each year… despite being vegetarian!
Is there a plan to make a second series of Mighty Rivers? JW: Well, it was originally intended as a stand-alone series, but there are more stories out there, and things are changing as we speak, so maybe there is scope to do a follow-up one day.
AT: You spend so much of your time travelling, so what do you do when you’re not on the road? Do you fish much in the UK? JW: Making the programmes is a full-time job. When I’m at home I’m normally just recovering, prepping future projects and attending meetings. But I did fish twice at home this year, for small tench and rudd with one of my nephews.
AT: Are there any other shows you’d like to create, Jeremy? JW: There are still plenty of things that I want to do. All I can say is ‘watch this space’!
“Starting in Shanghai and ending on the Tibetan plateau was a round trip of about 14,000 miles from the UK”