River Monsters - Phantom Assassin

In the last episode of RM of Canada's version of S4, JW returns to Australia to tackle a rare and elusive Glyphis shark, and from the start, problems begin.

JW's problems appear to be technical: there is driftwood in the river that tangles up in the tackle and fishing line; there are other fish, and also freshwater crabs, that eat the bait; and there are the bull sharks and saltwater crocodiles that would eat the bait and the anglers, if they could. In fact, a sizable part of the episode is centered on the saltwater crocodiles and their interactions with people: this episode reconstructs a story where a saltwater crocodile has emerged from the river at night and attacked two tourists in their tent, almost killing one of them in the process. That's just scary.

The other main predator in this episode are the sharks. First, there are the bull sharks, which by now have become a rather established character of RM: JW has about one episode per RM season about those cartilaginous fish so far, including the first episode of this season, BTW. Thus, it is no surprise to the audience to see JW catch several of them in the process of the ep... but there are others.

More precisely, there are other cartilaginous fish - not just the sharks. An Australian sawfish and a whipray both make cameo appearances as river monsters, but it is still the sharks who steal the show.

Well... sort of. In this episode, JW actually goes out to sea to fish for them (for XP, I assume). There, as he first encounters the multitude of sharks that inhabit Australia's coast (and some of them are official man-eaters) and later - the rough and unpredictable coastal ties in King Sound in particular (9 m of water going up and down - that's a lot!), he realizes that the boundaries between the fresh water and the salt are less distinct than he had thought, and that even such sea-based sharks as the mako can come up the river for a while, not just the bull shark and the sawfishes.

But what about the Glyphis shark - the river monster that JW went to catch in this episode? Did he catch it? Yes! It is a rather small and gracile shark, much less intimidating than the bull, for example, but it is a shark that lives primarily in the fresh water, not in the sea, unlike the bull, and as such, this catch of JW deserves points for its rarity, if anything else. After all, size alone does not make a river monster, as the Mekong giant catfish can testify...

S4 of RM had its ups and downs, with some very unequal and different (in quality) episodes. But it has ended on a positive, upbeat note, and so I can safely admit that I have enjoyed watching it, period.