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While in Venezuela filming
an episode of Angry Planet, I knew I wanted to do something with
piranhas since they have such a reputation for being vicious
killers, able to strip a human to the bone in mere minutes. Well,
these kinds of stories, although possible, are rare or exaggerated
and I wanted to prove that you CAN safely swim with these fish
under the right circumstances. We started off by finding a pond
that was just FULL of them. This pond was downstream of a large
cattle ranch and I was more worried about possible e-coli contamination
than piranha attack. We fished for them and it took mere seconds
before we had one biting at the raw chicken we had on the hook.
The water would boil with frantic fish as soon as the meat hit
the surface of the water... Perhaps swimming with them was not
such a good idea.
After catching a bucket of
them, we brought them back to our home base for the night and
had them cooked up for dinner. Piranhas taste very good and I
found it ironic to be eating a fish that could be capable of
eating me.
The next day, we went out in
search of more piranhas that were in clearer water and it didn't
take long until we encountered a perfect pond that had thousands
of them. We tested the waters by throwing in more chicken and
again, within seconds, the splashing of hungry piranhas broke
the surface. I some talking to the camera about how the piranhas
are really only dangerous in the dry season and that if you don't
have any open cuts, there should be little danger. Even after
studying them in theory and understanding that the risk was relatively
low, the fact that the water level was low, the fish were very
excited and they had already been tempted by raw meat didn't
make me any less nervous. As soon as I jumped in, I was expecting
to feel a nip but it never came. They were not too interested
in me but if one curious fish had decided to give me a bite,
the blood could have started a feeding frenzy so I chose to keep
my time in the water limited to just a few minutes.
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