Chasing Giants: In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish by Zeb Hogan and Stefan Lovgren (review)

Reviewed by: Chasing Giants: In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish by Zeb Hogan and Stefan Lovgren Michael J. Pauers Chasing Giants: In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish. By Zeb Hogan and Stefan Lovgren (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2023), 257 pp. When the television show The Crocodile Hunter, featuring the late zookeeper and conservationist Steve Irwin, was becoming popular, I frequently thought that a fish-oriented television show like Irwin's could be quite popular. I never followed up on this idea myself, but I was not surprised when, a few years later, programs highlighting freshwater fishes became common on cable television. Among these was the provocatively titled Monster Fish. Unlike its competitors, it was hosted by a research biologist, Zeb Hogan, Ph.D., and detailed his quest to find the world's largest freshwater fish. While that sounds like little more than an excuse for all-expenses-paid fishing trips, he did have an important goal. Large freshwater fishes, because of their size and migratory habits, are imperiled by human activities like fishing and dam building, so finding where these fishes live and how they use their habitats is a crucial first step in protecting them. As such, I had high hopes for an entertaining and informative show. Unfortunately, I found the show not to my liking. These fishes, despite their size, were not monstrous, and certainly not deserving of a name that invokes fear and horror; indeed, Hogan's narration often described them as gentle and misunderstood giants. Additionally, the rough handling of the fishes, which I knew was necessitated by the size of the fish and the challenges presented by their habitats, made me uncomfortable. If the goal of the show was to promote the conservation of these fishes, then why was their safety and welfare being compromised? I soon stopped watching. This mirrors my experience with Hogan's newly published book, cowritten with his longtime collaborator Stefan Lovgren. Chasing Giants begins promisingly, and the first two chapters are particularly compelling. These chapters provide an engaging mix of science, adventure, and Hogan's own development as a television personality. Here, Hogan discusses his childhood passion for aquatic life, and how this ultimately blossomed into his Megafishes Project and accompanying television show. The book begins to lose focus in Chapter 3 ("Old Fish, Ancient Origin"). In this chapter, Hogan and Lovgren attempt to summarize hundreds of millions of years of vertebrate evolution in about two and a half pages and have to omit much detail to do so; additionally, there seem to be some factual errors (i.e., referring to the extinct saurichthyid lizard fishes as "disaster fish"). Most importantly, it is just not relevant to the purpose of this book to devote so much space to extinct fishes when their only connection to the story is that they were large. This chapter also features scattershot descriptions of several extant megafishes, each of which is deserving of its own chapter, and some of which (e.g., sturgeons) are revisited throughout the book. Chapter 4 ("A River Runs Short") similarly suffers from a lack of [End Page 59] focus. This chapter, ostensibly about the Colorado River and the anthropogenic insults it has suffered, nonetheless also spends several pages on Lake Victoria in East Africa, the Columbia River in Washington State, and the Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada. Furthermore, although the Colorado River is home to one of the largest species of catostomid fishes, the Flannelmouth Sucker (Catostomus latipinnis), this fish is certainly not a megafish, at least not according to Hogan's own definition. Chapters 6 ("The Age of Loneliness") and 7 ("Under Father Sky") are probably the highlights of the book, and I wish the other chapters had been as clear and organized. Both chapters present a tightly focused story of a single megafish population from a single location. Chapter 6 tells the sad story of the Chinese Paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), native to the Yangtze River. This fish is now likely extinct, due to pollution and the construction of multiple dams throughout its migratory path. The next chapter features the Mongolian population of Taimen (Hucho taimen), the world's largest salmon...

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