Skip to playerSkip to main content
dmdmdtvs
  • 4 months ago
River.Monsters.S05E04.Colombian.Slasher
Transcript
00:00My name is Jeremy Wade, angler, biologist and freshwater detective.
00:17I've traveled the world to uncover the river monsters behind mysterious and bloody attacks.
00:23But for every case I solve another floats to the surface.
00:29On the Canadian border I've heard of a vast and brooding lake that hides a dark history.
00:38For Native Americans it is an ancient and sacred site.
00:44But recently something has risen up from its murky depths to attack swimmers.
00:53They are extremely fast, extremely aggressive, they are very difficult to kill and they want your blood.
01:02What's behind this nightmarish invasion of primordial bloodsuckers?
01:08I'm embarking on a punishing mission to battle the most ancient river monster I've ever encountered.
01:15And reveal the true identity of the vampires of the deep.
01:20The myth of the vampire has a terrifying grip on our imagination.
01:37Ancient, undying and forever feeding on the blood of its human victims.
01:43I thought Latin America was home to the only real vertebrate to drink human blood.
01:52The vampire bat.
01:55Until I discovered an equally bloodthirsty catfish with very nasty habits living there too.
02:01The candiru.
02:03This fish is just leaking blood.
02:05It's not this fish's blood.
02:06It's something it's been feeding on.
02:08It is just an absolute nightmare vampire fish this thing.
02:14Now I'm hearing that there might be another aquatic vampire attacking humans.
02:19A lot bigger and a lot more bloodthirsty than the candiru.
02:24This time not in South America but in North.
02:28On a vast body of water straddling the border between the US and Canada.
02:32Lake Champlain.
02:35Where a vampiric creature is said to be targeting swimmers.
02:41One story tells of a man who attempted to swim the six miles across the lake.
02:47In the middle something seized onto his leg.
02:53He kept sinking as he struggled to get free.
03:03When he finally got away he was left with a strange circular mark.
03:08Said to be the bite of a bloodsucker.
03:14I've come to the lake to find out if these attack stories are actually true.
03:22Just a couple of hours in the air can tell you so much more than several days at ground level.
03:32Flying really reveals the lie of the land or in this case the lie of the water.
03:38I've already heard reports of giant pike and ten foot sturgeon.
03:44But the best way for me to identify a perpetrator is to get a line in the water.
03:48The question is, where do I start?
03:51This vast lake is 125 miles long and in places plunges to 400 foot deep.
04:01During the last ice age this was actually an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean and all manner of creatures were free to come and go.
04:07Seals, walrus, even whales and who knows what else.
04:26Native Americans have fished this murky lake from the last ice age right up to the present day.
04:33For a tribe called the Abenaki, or people of the dawn, it is sacred.
04:38Home to powerful underwater spirits.
04:41Tradition demands they make offerings of tobacco smoke to placate the spirits before setting out on the lake's often treacherous waters.
04:49When Europeans arrived, the Abenaki way of life changed beyond recognition.
04:56But some of their fishing expertise has survived.
05:00Roger Longto Sheehan, chief of the Elnu band, shows me tools that have helped them catch fish from the lake for centuries.
05:08These look like some kinds of fishing implements. What exactly are they?
05:12A gouge, which is made of bone. You put your bait over the top of it, fish would swallow it.
05:17And when you yank it up, it gets caught inside of them, and you pull them up.
05:21Sort of a forerunner of a hook, in fact, just a simpler version of that.
05:24Yeah. You have bonefish hooks, which are real common here in the northeast.
05:30They're not as strong as the gouge because they can crack away here.
05:35So here you have bone fishing spears, made out of moose bone,
05:41again wrapped with cordage, and then covered with the spruce tar to make it waterproof.
05:48Today, few Abenaki use traditional tackle.
05:52But they do still rely on traditional knowledge handed down over millennia.
05:57Knowledge I hope will help me close in on the mystery bloodsucker.
06:02I'm looking at this body of water here, and I'm thinking you'd be waiting a long time
06:05until you get some kind of target.
06:06Except for when you know where they are, like when they're spawning into the rivers,
06:10which case we have many accounts of, you know, the fish being so thick
06:15that people say you can almost walk on them.
06:17So although this is a big body of water and the fish at the moment are, you know,
06:22are pretty spread out, but if you know the times and the places,
06:24you can go to where there's a very rich food source.
06:27Yes.
06:31The Abenaki people discovered a very long time ago that at certain times of the year
06:36certain of the creatures, in fact, come very, very close to the edge of the lake,
06:40even enter some of the rivers and streams that feed it.
06:43And the reason they do this is to breed.
06:45And it turns out that I'm actually here at about the right time.
06:49So it's now a case of pinpointing those places.
06:53Some of the lake's bedrock is around a billion years old.
06:59There's something very eerie and ancient about this place.
07:05Rogers told me that some of the predatory fish here are incredibly ancient, too.
07:09One, which some Native Americans call the Chauzerou,
07:12occasionally gathers in the shallows to breed.
07:16It's going to be a challenge to get their attention.
07:23Where should they reach the shore?
07:25Could they take a breath a fish אזוא�?
07:26This fishing norm probably ощullie?
07:27They're vaccinated too much.
07:28Of course?
07:29그렇죠!
07:30That's it!
07:31What should they eerie away haul,
07:32and tell them, is that the nests?
07:33There's no one shop on the vet one house.
07:35And parable frontiers.
07:36Who said we're going yourvid jedin?
07:37People cut off yourself.
07:38Yes.
07:40I don't want to be a trip.
07:41I don't want to bear and tell them.
07:42Its smoother, in prison run to the fiber please put a ship on a line,
07:43Which is currently in the seas a matter.
07:45What I thought was a bite was, in fact, the hook catching on this tough creature's armour.
08:05Not reacting at all.
08:08I'm trying to remember the last time I fished with so many fish visible in front of me,
08:14but the lack of interest is really frustrating.
08:17But occasionally, if you just get the lure in their face, it just tempts this reflex.
08:25Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that's one hooked, that's one hooked.
08:30I'm just hoping that hook stays attached.
08:44The fish some Native Americans called the Chauzeru, I know by a different name.
08:53This is a long-nosed gar.
08:55Very, very ancient fish.
08:57That armour plating was probably protecting it against pterodactyls back in the day.
09:01And those teeth, very, very spiky and sharp.
09:05The Abenaki use the gar's teeth to carve tattoos, so these fangs can certainly draw blood.
09:12But I can't see how this elongated snout could create the circular bite described by the swimmer.
09:24If I'm to find the culprit, I need to scout out more potential breeding sites along the lake shore.
09:30The lake sits between two mountain ranges, which act as a wind tunnel.
09:37Gusts of 60 miles an hour have been known to whip calm water into seven-foot swells.
09:43I'm grateful my hunt is confined to the margins for now.
09:48We're actually right in the shallows, a couple of feet deep, if that.
09:55Conditions are not ideal, but at least that is making it harder for the fish to see us, potentially.
10:00So we're just nosing around very slowly to see if we can see any movement in the water.
10:09Think about fishes even in shallow, clear water.
10:11It's amazing how they can hide.
10:13Can a carefully placed lure entice a predator with a taste for blood out of hiding?
10:27Here we go.
10:31Oh, he's in the weeds!
10:44On a vast lake that stretches across the U.S.-Canadian border, I'm on the hunt for an aquatic vampire that attacks swimmers.
10:55And what I'm trying to do now is what I do best.
10:58Catching a potential suspect on Rod and Ryan.
11:02Oh, yeah.
11:03Whoa, this is a bowfin.
11:09That was just a black shape, a horizontal white line.
11:14This is a toothy animal here, but also very colourful, amazingly colourful.
11:19It's believed this vivid green is designed to attract females in the mating season.
11:25I'm holding it with this grip because even with these gloves, those teeth might go through.
11:29Quite a similarity with snakehead in a way, the head, the teeth, the eye spot on the tail.
11:36Bowfin are a relative of the gar and the only survivors of an ancient family of fish that evolved around a hundred million years ago.
11:44This lake really does feel like a sanctuary for some of the oldest fish on the planet.
11:49Their swim bladder can act as a lung, letting them survive out of water for several hours.
11:56And their impressive jaws can close like a vice, easily drawing blood.
12:02But nothing in this reveals the perpetrator I'm looking for.
12:06These are not the jaws of a blood sucker.
12:09In fact, it looks like this fish might have been on the receiving end of an attack.
12:12If I just, just have the fish slightly supported, actually just behind this pectoral fin, there's this red circular mark.
12:20And something has, something's had a go, done something to this fish.
12:25Attached to it, raft it, which ties in with some of the stories I've been hearing.
12:29Is the mystery vampire leaving the same circular wound on humans and fish?
12:34Amazing that even a fish as tough and aggressive as a bowfin is not immune.
12:40It makes me think that the blood sucker I'm after is even more aggressive and powerful.
12:47But where is it lurking?
12:48Large predators sometimes wait in ambush on the edge of fast flowing water.
13:04It's time to hunt out the places where the currents are strong.
13:10What we tend to think of as an enclosed body of water is in fact a lot more complex than that.
13:15There's actually a couple of hundreds of these waterways feeding the lake.
13:22And from up here, they're almost like watery tentacles reaching their way inland.
13:31More than 8,000 square miles of surrounding forest and mountains drain into these rivers and streams,
13:38making their flows highly volatile.
13:40On the western shore, I've found a river that has deep, churning water and plenty of eddies for toothy predators to stalk.
13:51I've scaled up my lure from one that looks like a bug to one that looks like a fish to attract larger hunters.
13:58The predators here don't hang around.
14:08Ah! Oh!
14:11The predators here don't hang around.
14:13That's something that looks a bit carp-like on the end there.
14:26Right, so that's what that took.
14:29That's interesting.
14:31Sucker-like mouth.
14:32About the same size as the wound on the fish, but it's rubbery.
14:38It has no teeth, so I can't see how this fish could create that red wound on the bowfin with suction alone.
14:46This is called a red horse sucker, so the red is very obvious, the sucking mouth is very obvious.
14:51And it's actually gone, it's gone back into the river.
14:58Well that fish, to me, looked like a herbivore, a vegetarian.
15:08That toothless, sucking mouth.
15:10So what was it doing, going after something that very clearly was mimicking a fast-moving live fish about six inches long?
15:21There's definitely some stuff going on in this river that I'm struggling to understand.
15:27In my travels I did once come across vegetarian fish turning into carnivores, the Amazonian paku.
15:34When it was translocated halfway around the world to Papua New Guinea, it stripped the rivers of vegetation and turned into a voracious meat-eater, terrorising local fishermen.
15:50I wonder if the balance in Lake Champlain is out of kilter too.
15:54Enough to change a fish's behaviour so it attacks other fish, and humans.
15:59I've no way of knowing until I catch it, so I have to keep knocking suspects off the list.
16:13That's a lovely fish.
16:15A European carp.
16:17It's one of more than 80 species in the lake, making my quest for the vampire of the deep far from simple.
16:23Heading into the deep water where the attack on the swimmer took place seems like an obvious next step.
16:32But it's going to be a lot harder to hunt down contenders out here.
16:39I've got to step things up again.
16:41I've now got three lures out now, two flashy silver spoons, arranged on this downrigger outfit here.
16:52So an eight-pound lump of lead, the line clipped to that, and then the lure following about sort of 30, 40 feet behind.
16:59And then I've got a surface lure out from this outrigger here.
17:02So we're going along about two miles an hour, and it's really a waiting game now, waiting for one of these rods to move.
17:07To move.
17:10I've no idea where the predator might be hiding, so this spread of lines lets me fish both the warm surface layer, as well as the cold, dark depths.
17:24Fish on.
17:28Here we go.
17:29What I discover out here reveals an assault on a whole new scale.
17:32There it is.
17:33Long-nosed gar are covered in very tough scales, but what protects their eggs from predation?
17:42The answer will surprise you.
17:47What protects gar eggs from predation?
17:50They're laced with a toxin that's highly poisonous to mammals, including humans.
17:55This is one kind of caviar you don't want to eat.
17:57Fish on.
17:58My hunt for a blood-sucking aquatic vampire has led me to the heart of an ancient lake on the US-Canadian border.
18:13I can see the fish.
18:14Is this the creature that's been attacking swimmers?
18:21Here we go.
18:23So this is my first fish out of the main body of the lake.
18:26Toothy predator, lovely patterning on it.
18:28And that is a lake trout.
18:31People think of, you know, brown trout and rainbow trout, fish in shallow waters, but this is a deep water species.
18:37It's actually very cold to the touch.
18:39This is my first one of these.
18:41And it's just a lovely, very nicely marked fish.
18:44Hey, what's going on there?
18:45This fish is marked in more ways than one.
18:49It appears to be another victim of the mystery attacker.
18:53Something's had a go at it.
18:55It looks just like the mark I saw on the bowfin, and in the same place.
19:02I've got to get my bait back in the water to find out just how widespread these attacks are.
19:06This has also got something behind the pectoral fin.
19:12And what I find is victim after victim.
19:16Just by my little finger here, there's a mark.
19:20It looks like these hunters have become the hunted.
19:26There's four of these fish I caught today, and they've all got these strange marks on them.
19:32So that's 100% record.
19:33Whatever it is has been hitting these fish.
19:36The thing is, I mean, the only thing I know that leaves marks like that is giant squid on things like sperm whales.
19:43But where does that leave me?
19:45On a freshwater lake.
19:47Although it was once connected to the open ocean, the idea of giant squid here now?
19:53I'm not convinced.
19:55So what else could account for these distinct wounds?
19:58I still don't know.
20:00But one thing I'm now sure of is that whatever's behind the attacks on fish
20:04must be responsible for the attacks on humans too.
20:08And finally, I have an opportunity to find out the truth.
20:11I've heard of a long-distance swimmer named Christopher Swain, who's got an attack story to tell.
20:18He takes me back to the place where he came face to face with a primitive creature from the deep.
20:26Can you take me through exactly what happened?
20:30I was in the midst of a 129-mile swim of the entire length of the lake.
20:36Most of the days were relatively uneventful.
20:39It's the same old thing.
20:41That day I'd been swimming for two or three hours already.
20:44The very first thing felt a lot like when your mobile phone's in your pocket and it vibrates.
20:52And the next thing I thought was that I'd caught on something.
20:55Sometimes it's a plant.
20:57But what plant could catch him in a hundred foot of water?
20:59So I reached down to brush whatever it was on my leg off.
21:06And I touched a living thing that was attached to me.
21:14There was something thicker than my wrist around that was moving like this.
21:21Then I just had a bit of a freak out.
21:25Because the next image that I saw when I put my goggles in was snake-like.
21:31I made another try to grab it and it slimed right out of my hand.
21:36So this thing that's on your leg, it's writhing around, what was it?
21:40It turned out to be about three and a half, four foot long sea lamprey.
21:46Sea lampreys are survivors from the depths of time.
21:51Like aquatic vampires, the adults are blood parasites that attach to other fish to feed when in the ocean.
21:57But they head into fresh water to spawn.
22:02Their mouths are made up of a powerful suction disc lined with rows of needle-sharp teeth.
22:08In the centre lies the ultimate weapon.
22:11A piston-like tongue tipped with rasping plates, which bores its way into its host.
22:16Once attached, it may feed for hours, days or even weeks, growing fat on its prey's blood.
22:26I ended up pulling it off and the first time I pulled it off, it shot back on.
22:31They don't want to be removed.
22:34So I got a hold of the thing finally and I managed to throw it.
22:38So I remember seeing it like in the air like a snake flailing around and go fall.
22:43This thing, it somehow just short-circuited your rational response in a way?
22:49I've been caught in lightning storms, I've swum through nuclear waste, I've been run over by boats.
22:54This is the thing that got to me the most.
22:56They're extremely fast, extremely aggressive, very hard to fight, very difficult to kill, and they want your blood and nutrients.
23:07It turns out I'm after a formidable and unhookable aquatic vampire.
23:16So how do I possibly catch one?
23:19Is offering myself up as bait the only way?
23:22I'm on the hunt for a blood-sucking vampire that's rising up from the depths of a vast lake on the US-Canadian border.
23:48Sea lampreys usually attach to larger fish in the ocean to feed, but recently it seems they've begun to attack swimmers too,
24:00who've dared to venture into the lake's deeper waters.
24:04But what exactly are they, and why are they attacking humans?
24:12I'm hoping one woman has the answers.
24:14Dr. Ellen Marsden has become a specialist in these resilient bloodsuckers, which are commonly confused with eels.
24:24But this is by far the most ancient river monster I've ever attempted to catch.
24:29Seeing eel and lamprey side by side, the difference starts to become clear.
24:34This is a true vertebrate. This is a proto-vertebrate. It's just in the process of becoming a vertebrate.
24:38It doesn't have a bony backbone. It has no bones in the body at all. It's so primitive it doesn't even have a true jaw.
24:45It has no lower mandible. It can't bite. Whereas an eel has a true jaw and can actually bite into something.
24:52So it's a fish, but it's the very beginning of the fish lineage.
24:57Around 300 million years of evolution separate these two animals.
25:00In fact, we have more in common with the eel than the eel does with the lamprey.
25:06So the predation is all about this structure on the front, is it?
25:11Right. And it's rather deceptive because you think, wow, all those teeth.
25:16They are teeth, but not in the way we think of them. They're not to bite.
25:20These are just grippers. It's like having gripper gloves to be able to grab something that's slimy.
25:24The thing that does the damage is actually down here in the mouth itself.
25:29So it has a tongue, much like the eel has a tongue, and on that tongue are chisel-like teeth.
25:35So this tongue is acting like a piston. It's going to come out and actually it rasps a hole in a fish.
25:42And again, it can't bite, so having rasped a hole into the fish, it's then going to use suction to suck body fluids, blood and other material out of that hole that it's just made.
25:51I've been catching fish on the lake here, and they are showing these very characteristic wounds.
25:57I've never come across that anywhere else. So what exactly is going on here?
26:00What's going on is we have an imbalance between the number of lamprey and the number of fish they're trying to feed on.
26:09It's believed that man-made canals connecting the lake to the ocean opened the floodgates to the lamprey.
26:15The environment they found was perfect, so they stopped returning to the sea.
26:27As their numbers climbed, so did the attacks on fish, and then swimmers.
26:32I've heard story after story, yet so far the lamprey has managed to elude me.
26:41But Dr Marsden's told me of a river where they're intercepted as they head upstream in their thousands to spawn.
26:48I'm going there to meet Brad Young of U.S. Fish and Wildlife to see a fish trap like no other.
26:58This dam was constructed specifically for the purpose of blocking sea lamprey adults as they try to spawn.
27:04It's about nine miles upstream from the lake, so they've been able to swim up on their own from here.
27:08They can swim about three feet per second and go over rapids without any problem.
27:13So as they're migrating upstream to find places to build nests and reproduce,
27:17we intercept them in this trap, and the sea lamprey are taken out and destroyed on site.
27:24Usually the river monsters I hunt are elusive creatures that are often revered or even protected.
27:30But it's a different story here.
27:32Culling has started to reduce the number of attacks.
27:38And the trap may be my only chance to get my hands on this primeval predator.
27:46But that means descending into a cramped concrete cell in the middle of the dam.
27:52A cell that could be harboring hundreds of blood-sucking lampreys.
27:57Ooh!
27:59Ah!
28:01I think I just shot on something.
28:05Ooh, ooh!
28:06Oh, there's a lot around the intake.
28:09A lot around there.
28:11I can just feel it's soft.
28:13There you go.
28:14Oh, yeah.
28:15I've just got a knot of lampreys in here.
28:28And they...
28:30Gosh, they...
28:32It's quite a sight.
28:34There's something about anything snake-like.
28:36It just produces that sort of instinctive squirmy reaction.
28:40Erm...
28:41I really don't know if I want to handle these.
28:48Ah!
28:50Right.
28:52Here we go.
28:53Oh, look, that's one attached to another one there.
29:02That's wriggling...
29:04I'm...
29:05Right, okay.
29:06There!
29:08Oh, right, okay.
29:09Do we put them in the other net there?
29:10Absolutely.
29:16Look at this!
29:17Look at this!
29:18Ah!
29:19That is a very, very strange sensation.
29:20Very strange.
29:21And it's looking me right in the eye.
29:23Ah!
29:24That's a good way to calm them down,
29:27but I now need to get it off and get it in the...
29:28Oh, look at that!
29:29It's actually...
29:30Oh!
29:31I've been bitten by fish before,
29:32but, I mean, that was pretty creepy.
29:33Ah!
29:34There's one...
29:35Something just went through my legs.
29:36Ugh!
29:37Ugh!
29:40Using their mucus coating and boneless flexibility,
29:43these primitive bloodsuckers find it easy to outmanoeuvre me.
29:50Right, that's a pretty good haul.
29:51That's me catching the lamprey.
29:53The next stage, which I'm not particularly looking forward to,
29:55is them catching me.
29:57It's time to face up to these aquatic vampires,
29:59in their own territory.
30:01Ah!
30:02Ah!
30:12The sea lamprey is the most ancient river monster I've ever encountered.
30:16Ah!
30:17The parallels with vampires are striking.
30:21They both tap into that same dark place,
30:24the primal fear that they'll drain the life force from us.
30:30I've waded through their writhing bodies in a trap built to eradicate them.
30:35Now, I'm going face-to-face, fang-to-vein,
30:39with a real living vampire.
30:42Whoa!
30:46And that's a strange feeling, that's a very strange feeling.
30:48There's suction, but there's something sharp going on as well.
30:54Ah!
30:55It's really getting stuck in there.
30:56Oh!
31:00The thing is, if you get these things attached,
31:02you're actually going to want to get them off.
31:03If you're swimming, you're needing your limbs to keep you afloat,
31:07to keep you moving.
31:08So what are you going to do?
31:09You've got these creatures attaching to you.
31:11Do I carry on swimming with maybe more and more attaching,
31:14or do I stop swimming and try and get these things off?
31:20Ah!
31:21Easier said than done.
31:22Ah!
31:23Ah!
31:24Come on!
31:25That is hard to get off.
31:26That is hard.
31:27That is hard to get off.
31:29Ah!
31:30Ah!
31:32I don't know if there's a mark there or not.
31:34Hopefully there's not a big red hole.
31:40That feels a bit sore.
31:41I mean, these things are like aquatic vampires.
31:44I don't think that's an experience I want to repeat.
31:47Yeah.
31:48I think I've seen and felt enough.
31:56But netting a lamprey in someone else's trap is not my idea of catching a river monster.
32:03I need to face up to this creature my way.
32:06To do that, I have to travel two and a half thousand miles to the Pacific Northwest,
32:13where I've heard that lampreys are caught using a traditional but dangerous technique.
32:25This is the Pacific, and there's another species of lamprey that lives here.
32:29I've heard that it's bigger than the ones I've seen so far.
32:32It's also toothier.
32:33The scientific name means three-fanged lamprey.
32:37And they're found all the way from Mexico right up to Alaska,
32:40all the way around the Pacific Rim to Russia and Japan.
32:44But right now, it's breeding season, and they're coming into the rivers.
32:50So that's where I'm heading.
32:53The Columbia River acts as a highway for salmon, sturgeon and lampreys
32:57as they head hundreds of miles inland to spawn.
33:03Many obstacles stand in their way on their journey upstream.
33:07The first is the Bonneville Dam,
33:09where a window into a fish ladder gives me a terrifying glimpse
33:13of what I'll be up against.
33:16Well, here they are. These are Pacific lamprey,
33:19and they are quite a bit larger than the ones I've seen so far.
33:22And also the teeth are significantly larger, quite gruesome.
33:25And again, just the sheer numbers of them.
33:28This is a mass invasion of underwater vampires.
33:34But despite their gruesome appearance, their arrival here is celebrated.
33:40While the sea lamprey is despised and feared in the east,
33:44the Pacific lamprey is virtually revered in the northwest.
33:48In generations past, Native Americans relied on these creatures as an important seasonal harvest.
33:55Over the years, they've seen many of their customs vanish.
34:00But here at the plank house of the confederated tribes of Grand Ronde,
34:04some ancient traditions still survive.
34:08Greg Archuleta catches and cooks lampreys using traditional methods.
34:13They don't have bone, they have a cartilage, so this thing has to be pulled all the way out.
34:21It's kind of a real elastic cord. You've got to get the whole thing out,
34:25because if you're not, it gives it a bitter taste.
34:26So what you've got left is just skin and meat, nothing else?
34:29Yeah. So now it's ready, we'll put it on the fire.
34:32Given the choice of salmon or lamprey, many native elders go for lamprey every time.
34:38So I'm hoping this primordial predator's flesh tastes a whole lot better than it looks.
34:44Have a taste.
34:45I'll tell you what it reminds me of a little bit. It reminds me a little bit of mackerel, you know,
34:54because that mackerel's very oily and you've got that crispy skin.
34:57Whereabouts do these actually come from?
35:00These come from Willamette Falls, and actually my family came from that area.
35:04From essentially time of memorial, we say, you know, our people have been there and fished there.
35:08Willamette Falls probably has one of the larger runs in this area now.
35:11They can come from the ocean to the falls without any obstacles, so there's still a good run there.
35:17But they are diminishing, so the tribes are working to try to get the runs improved again.
35:23In the past, gathering this gift from nature was easy.
35:27Migrating lampreys literally covered the rocks at the falls.
35:32But now they're in decline, harvesters must negotiate the heart of the thundering falls
35:37and wrench them from deep rock crevices and churning pools.
35:44Entering the lair of this ancient bloodsucker is not only dangerous, but frankly horrifying.
35:52It's extremely rare for outsiders to join the hunt, but the Grand Ronde have made an exception.
35:58I hope I can repay their generosity with a decent haul of lamprey.
36:05Tribal council member Peter Wakeland and his son Tory take me up the turbulent waters of the Willamette River towards the falls.
36:14Bruises are very common. There's a lot of big boulders in there. It's very slippery.
36:21Presumably you can't see anything?
36:22I think it's definitely an art of feel. You're just going to be pretty much blind and feeling away down in there.
36:31150 miles from the ocean, we're on the same migratory path as salmon, sturgeon and lamprey.
36:38Anything swimming up the Willamette River is eventually going to encounter this.
36:4540 foot high wall of rock, curving round to 1,500 feet.
36:50I'm awestruck by the challenge facing both the fish and us.
36:55In terms of the volume of water, these are the biggest falls in the entire US after Niagara.
37:00And you can well understand how this is going to cause a pause in the fish migrations.
37:06And this is why people have been coming to this place for millennia.
37:10And it's into this water that I've got to go.
37:13In the Pacific Northwest, I'm about to throw myself into the pounding waters of the Willamette Falls on the hunt for the blood sucking lamprey.
37:35We're going to make our way up above these boulders.
37:38We want to work our way across the face and check in all those cracks.
37:41I'll be working blind. The only aids I have are cotton gloves to improve my grip on these slimy serpent-like vampires.
38:01Peter tries to shield me from the huge surge that's pulling at our legs under the water.
38:07Any of us could get sucked under and drown.
38:10The sound is deafening. I can barely hear Peter's instructions.
38:15I'm desperate to get my hands on a lamprey, but I'm coming up empty.
38:20Further up, there's a rock face where lampreys congregate right under the highest falls.
38:21But the risks are much greater. I don't think we have a choice.
38:23We're going to get further into the falls.
38:25Oh, no, no.
38:27The sound is deafening. I can barely hear Peter's instructions.
38:31I'm desperate to get my hands on a lamprey, but I'm coming up empty.
38:39Further up, there's a rock face where lampreys congregate right under the highest falls.
38:44But the risks are much greater. I don't think we have a choice.
38:49We're going to get further into the falls.
38:53The slick basalt is lethal. If I slip, I could be forced under and pinned down by the thundering water.
39:00I wouldn't be the first person to drown here.
39:08I think we're going to go in, try to get a good foothold, so you don't get flushed over the edge.
39:13And we're just going to start reaching down, feeling, you're not going to be able to see,
39:16and there's a lot of water coming over today.
39:20Around 20,000 cubic feet per second.
39:29The only way to prise them off is to get right behind their mouths.
39:42But they're in a very deep crevice.
39:44And there it is. This is a real first for me.
40:01This is a fish that can't be caught on a bait, on a rod and line.
40:07And there are the three fans.
40:09But one fish doesn't make a feast.
40:32Just as I've mastered my technique, I feel something hit me.
40:35Dozens of lampreys are flying out of the falls.
40:39The fish have all scooped from this hole, so we've got to go into the even wilder water here.
40:49Can't really see. There's so much water.
40:54Behind the torrents, lampreys are suckering their way up the 40-foot rock face to the river above.
41:00This is my last chance to seize these writhing vampires.
41:03I'm hoping to bag at least 40.
41:05Peter finally says...
41:17I'm hoping to bag at least 30.
41:25I'm hoping to bag at least 30.
41:34Peter finally says we have enough.
41:38Even though I've now got one in my hands,
41:41the lamprey is still a very hard creature to pin down.
41:46To some people it's this hideous invader,
41:48but to others it's a gift from nature.
41:51And with its snake-like body,
41:53its vampire-like feeding habits,
41:55you can well understand why for some people
41:57this has become the stuff of nightmares.
42:01A primordial vampire that's been on the Earth longer
42:04than any other river monster I've encountered.
42:10For behind-the-scenes stories, fishing games and more,
42:13go to animalplanet.com slash rivermonsters.