Amazon Apocalypse is the first episode of the sixth season of River Monsters.
Episode Description[]
Hundreds died when the Sobral Santos sank on the Amazon, many rumored to have been eaten alive. Jeremy Wade retraces the doomed boat's last voyage & faces adversaries, old & new, as he tries to uncover what happened.
Episode Summary[]
Jeremy Wade has hunted for freshwater killers for many years and has been to many parts of the world. But one place continues to call him back: The Amazon. It has lots of legends of dangerous freshwater creatures and attacks that Jeremy continues to investigate.
This time Jeremy is returning for a year to investigate everything he can. He will kick off his journey by investigating the river's worst boat disaster: the sinking of the Sobral Santos.
When the Sobral Santos went down, hundreds of people were thrown into the waters, and only a few survived. He manages to catch many piranhas but they could not be responsible for killing many people as they hunt in daylight.
After hearing some eyewitness reports he realized that people were dragged under the surface on the night of the accident. The next few days the people were dismembered. A diver helping with the rescue had seen a large fish in the water.
Hearing this evidence, Jeremy decides that he must investigate the Amazon "heavyweights" and try to figure out the killers. First he decides to investigate the Piraiba Catfish.
However, he quickly rules out this suspect due to the fact that since Piraiba have no teeth, they would not be able to dismember people. Although they can drag people under the surface, these predators are usually solitary meaning that they would not be able to take down hundreds of people on one night.
He investigates the Arapaima next but quickly outrules it too. The Arapima cannot drag people under or dismember them and thus could not be the perpetrators of the attack.
He then moves on to studying the Black Caiman. This predator would be capable of both dismembering and dragging people. However, these amphibious predators tend to stay close to the shore instead of going straight into the middle of hundreds of feet of deep, swirling waters. Also, they tend to hold on to their prey and a large number of caimans would be unlikely.
He goes to the local fish market and tries to find out what fish could have done the attacks. This fish market does not show the results so he heads to a different one. Here, he sees an old mummified Bull Shark that was there in numbers at the time of the attack and decides he must follow up on the Bull Shark.
However, after extensive investigation on the Bull Shark he realizes that they were not actually in the numbers he first thought and have not been reported to commit too many attacks on people. They are also solitary hunters, incapable of killing so many people.
He then moves on to the river's top mammal predator, the boto, or river dolphin. The boto has been known to attack and kill even Bull Sharks and is a lot more flexible. He has been in the water with botos but quickly got out. He decides to swim with botos again and sees that they would not be capable of dismembering or sucking people under the surface. Also, they do not attack unprovoked. They are also off the list.
As Jeremy has eliminated each and every one of the large fish he knows now that it is likely the numbers that killed people. He thus investigates the Candiru Acu, a parasite that hunts in large numbers and at night. But, they are able to eat people's flesh, not dismember limbs or suck people under the surface and drown them.
As Jeremy fishes on, he realizes that catfish were in very large numbers back then. He now goes back to the case for the Piraiba Catfish. It is possible that they could drag people underwater, and their remains to be scavenged.
He keeps fishing and learns something new about the Redtail Catfish, or Pirarara. This fish hunts in very large numbers and is able to drag people under the surface. He realizes that when they get hold of prey, they make a dash underwater, strong enough to drown a full grown man.
He then proceeds to catch multiple large redtails and a large piraiba. He sees that the docks back then were full of catfish since people did not eat them or fish for them. He thinks that he has an idea of what happened that night.
Jeremy explains that large redtails came in on the night of the disaster, and were able to drag the people underwater, aided by large Piraiba. That night, other predators like the Bull Shark, Boto, Black Caiman, and Candiru slowly ate away at the remains, so although there are not too many of these predators, the sheer numbers or them all combined managed to scavenge the remains. In the morning Piranhas came in to take what was remaining.
Animals Featured[]
- TBA
Locations Featured[]
- TBA