"Fear has a useful function: it concentrates the mind. And the appropriate reaction is to work to understand the thing that is causing the fear whether it’s a large fish or anything else. This way both parties are more likely to survive the encounter unscathed."

“You do get these similar stories everywhere. And I think part of that is because the underwater world is so unknown. The human mind doesn’t like a vacuum. We will populate that vacuum with the contents of our own head, and often that’s scary stuff. It’s a blank canvas. Often what happens is that real creatures get mixed up. They’ll get our own baggage mixed up with their reality, and part of my job is to sort that out.”

“There is real wisdom there about respecting the environment that more enlightened people, supposedly, have forgotten all about.”

“We live in the information age where in theory everybody knows anything. You ask somebody where your fish comes from, they don’t know. You go, “Is that because you can’t tell me or because the system is designed to obscure that fact?” Which unfortunately is the case a lot of the time.”

“The thing about rivers, is if you work with them, if you give them a little bit of help, it’s surprising how much they respond. And I think that is cause for hope. If we can just change our attitudes just a little bit, from being out-and-out exploitative to just sort of drawing back a little bit, and just giving them a little bit of thought and help… they do have this incredible regenerative power.”

“Eating a fish from a river used to be a birth right, but those days are long gone. Now it’s our duty to put them back.”