RM - Vampires of the Deep

In this week's episode JW chose to investigate the so-called "vampires of the deep" - the little known and enigmatic lampreys.

What does a lay person know about the lamprey? Probably little to nothing. The lamprey (and its cousin the hagfish) are the only jawless fish in the world; technically they belong to the vertebrate group, but in reality they have no bones, and have survived almost unchanged since the dawn of time. Impossible Pictures' mini-series "Walking with Monsters" (2005) feature two kinds of jawless fish: unarmored (Haikouichthys) and armored (Cephalaspis). Neither had any mouths and fed by sucking in various edible debris from the sea floor. The lamprey larvae feed in the same manner; the lamprey adults are active predators instead. Personally, I doubt that JW attaching an adult sea lamprey to his neck was a good idea, but that's why JW is the man, on the other hand...

The lamprey's natural history aside, was "VotD" an exciting episode? Yes. For one thing, there were plenty of fish species and fish catching featured in this episode. True, there were flashbacks to episodes past, but at a tolerable level still - no "Colombian slasher" this episode, no sir! JW's attempts at making suspense, on the other hand, were annoying, and at a level with "Atomic Assassin": pointless, for anyone with some logic and knowledge of the natural world would figure out the attacker's lamprey identity early in the episode.

But there was another tie to "Atomic Assassin" and similar episodes (such as "Russian Killer" from S4) - the ecological one, the impact of humans on nature. On one hand we have an infestation of sea lampreys in lake Champlain caused by human meddling, and on the other - there's the rapidly falling number of Pacific lampreys caused by the same meddling. This human factors transforms "VotD" from a very good into a really great one - it is particularly interesting to observe JW aid the Native Americans assisting the Pacific lamprey in utilizing the so-called 'lamprey ladder' to get to their spawning ground...

Thus, it is safe to say that in the end "Vampires of the Deep" was a very good episode, if not downright great: the only flaws was the pointless 'guessing game' of JW in the first third of the episode, and the unresolved question as to why the greater redhorse (the catfish caught in this episode) actually went after live prey (a fishing lure actually), showing behavior atypical to this species. Ah well, not even JW had time to solve and uncover everything in a single episode... Maybe next time. Lol.