Surviving 12 HOURS in a MANGROVE FOREST

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:12]Hello everyone and welcome to the mangrove system of Queensland.

[00:00:17]My mates dropped me off just before and now I'm embarking on a 12-hour challenge. We are completely remote right now and we have to survive off anything we catch. As you guys can probably tell, I've walked a decent journey now and the coast, it's just along there. So, I'll be heading there in a second. But, I feel like now is the perfect time to explain what I'm actually doing in this video. In order for me to finish this challenge and I get to go home, I get to go sleep in my bed. I have to complete three tasks. All right. So, the first task is I got to find a dead whale. Now, my mates have told me that there's one far out in the coast along the mangroves. It's probably going to take me a few hours to find it.

[00:01:00]So, it's the carcass and bones, apparently. So, I'm keen to find that.

[00:01:05]Two, there's also an abandoned ship somewhere out there, too. And um yeah, no clue how that got there, but we'll be exploring that as well. Number three, we got to find mud crab. And that's that's all the food I have to eat today. if I can get a mud crab. So, it's not perfect time of year for mud crabs, but we're going to we're going to make use make use of what we got. Also, don't have any fishing line or anything, so I'm really disadvantaged. But look, this is the survival challenge. Also, I will just specify that I am completely remote.

[00:01:37]Legit. Just saw a walabby hop right past me a second ago. Um, I have basically no data, so I'm in the middle of nowhere, completely isolated. So, if something goes wrong, we're a little bit cooked, but it's all good. This is what we need to do to survive. Um, I'm also going to show you what's in my backpack now. So, quite literally, tripod, a torch. If it comes to sleeping at night, which um I'm praying that's not going to be this video. If this video does decent, I will sleep overnight and do a proper 24-hour challenge guaranteed out here. But, uh, let me know if you want to see that. I'm praying it's not this video, but, you know, time will tell. one water bottle with um Yeah, that's that's a little concerning.

[00:02:22]Maybe I should have um put more water in it. It's all right. I have no car keys, no way of getting back home. I actually honestly a little bit lost, but you know, that's all part of it. And then finally, I have a trail camera, too, which I'm actually going to attach to one of these trees here. So, hopefully we can find out what's actually out here because I kind of want to know what's out here before I do the 24-hour challenge. Hopefully, it's just a bunch of kangaroos and walabbees and nothing too concerning. A fox would not be great, but um I'm going to insert the footage here of what I catch.

[00:02:54]And that's it. That's legit everything in my bag. So, we are going proper survival today. Eating only what we catch.

[00:03:03]Need to complete these tasks. Let's go.

[00:03:36]All right, guys. I've actually found little beach here. So, I think I might just set up and just chill for a little bit cuz I'm bloody tired. Right next to this beach here, we do have this unfortunate sad remains of a turtle.

[00:03:51]Just shows how desolate, how harsh it is out here. This turtle would have come in here at high tide and probably banked itself and unable to get out and in that 6 hour period would unfortunately passed. But this is pretty old cuz there's no head, there's no flesh or anything. But um just shows what we're working with today.

[00:04:17]And speaking of bones, I do believe that we are pretty close to where the whale is. So, let's lock in on that and complete task one.

[00:04:35]Yet another huge turtle lost to the tide.

[00:05:06]This right here is clearly one of the side fins.

[00:05:10]Absolutely massive. Huge animal.

[00:05:15]I'd honestly love to know the story of what happened to this guy. But that's life. That's the snow of life. This is actually incredible.

[00:05:25]It's honestly like I'm holding a massive dinosaur.

[00:05:35]Feel like this is a pretty good example of how unforgiving the mangrove systems out here in Queensland are. I've actually just searched for about another 20 minutes looking for the head cuz I feel like finding the head of a whale would be absolutely insane. Fortunately, I cannot find it, but it's just the way it is. Got to respect it. Anyway, task one is complete. Let's head for task two and find that ship.

[00:06:13]Little update. Um, I have not seen another human in I want to say 3 hours, but I'm not looking at the time. It's right there. I'm going to say it's 11:00. It's really hard to keep track of time when you're out here. And um just goes to show how remote I'm truly living right now.

[00:06:52]Uh, for some reason the footage for task two, the boat isn't the best. So, I've just inserted a few clips from my camera roll right there.

[00:07:01]Yep. Task two complete.

[00:07:10]All right, guys. So, as I said, today's main goal is to catch uh mud crabs and do a catch and cook. Hopefully they're around because um mud crab season is more in summer, so they're a lot more common out in summer and during the cooler months they push back out to sea uh to stay warm. But um by the time I'm filming this, well, I'm filming this in uh it is April right now, so it's not too cold. It's not winter just yet, but it's also not summer. So the odds are, you know, not the best, but not the worst.

[00:07:41]I'm so bloody hungry, man.

[00:07:54]All right, guys. We are deep, deep in the mangroves right now. Honestly, I can't tell you the exact location where we are. Um, but at this point, I just want food. So hungry.

[00:08:08]I'm surviving purely off instincts right now.

[00:08:12]I think I just saw something right in a hole.

[00:08:15]Let's give it a shot.

[00:08:20]All right, guys. Little update. I found one of the biggest holes I've ever seen.

[00:08:23]It doesn't doesn't look that big on camera. This thing is massive. And uh it only takes a big crab to make a big hole. So, let's check her.

[00:08:34]So, what you want to do when you're going for holes, you want to close fist, thumb in like that. And that way if they are angry and they want to nip you, they can't get you because you don't have any fat on this part of your knuckles here.

[00:08:46]Like yeah, they could attack, but they can't pull skin. And uh yeah, I don't really want to lose my hand out here cuz there's no hospitals in about I want to say a 10 mile radius. So let's get it.

[00:09:17]Ah, no one's home. Bugger. All right, next one.

[00:09:31]All right, guys. Um, just found a pretty decent hole and it looks like there's recent activity around it. Here, I'll show you.

[00:09:39]So, holes right here. What you want to look for when you're finding muddy holes is if there's action around the sides.

[00:09:46]Normally, there's shells and stuff cuz crabs like to collect them. Oh, there's there's you see there's a little bit of movement there, tracks there. So, it could potentially be a crab in there, but you know, only one way to find out.

[00:09:57]All right, guys. Next hole.

[00:10:05]Nothing.

[00:10:07]Where are the crabs?

[00:10:22]I've just checked about five more crab holes. All of them have been empty. But all it takes is one hole, one crab. The challenge is complete. Go on. We can do this. Well, guys, I thought we finally did it for a few hours. Um, sadly, they're both dead.

[00:10:41]I have no clue what happened to these guys. But they've been here for a while cuz if you look at that, they turned all red. It's what happens in the heat. Must be disgusting. Probably should not be touching it, but Oh, look at the size of that.

[00:11:01]That would have been lunch right there.

[00:11:02]If it comes to it and I ran out of water, we might be drinking some of this later.

[00:11:23]All right, guys. We have a little dilemma. We're either completely lost and we're retracing our footsteps or someone else is out here with us. Let me just flip the camera. This is either my footsteps or someone else's. I don't know about you, that looks pretty recent considering that tide has only gone out maybe an hour ago. So, tide would have covered this. So, unless this is mine, we're not alone out here. So, we do got to be extra cautious.

[00:11:52]This is the first time I'm doing a proper mission like this, a proper survival challenge. I'm trying desperately to conserve all the droplets of water I have. If I spill just a couple droplets, that could make all the difference.

[00:12:26]All right, guys. Sadly, I did not get it on video cuz I had to run. I saw this dude sprint into a hole. Obviously, he's not legal. He is missing a claw. I did see a claw outside of the hole, so might have been him. You can tell it's a female there. But you see all those stripes there and the green on the stomach in that U kind of shape. So obviously even if it was 15 cm not legal can't eat females in Queensland. Anyway, got to keep moving.

[00:12:55]There she is.

[00:12:56]Beautiful big muddy hole. Oh, there's some sign of recent activity.

[00:13:02]No claws or shells though.

[00:13:06]Let's give it a shot.

[00:13:08]Oh, this is a deep hole.

[00:13:14]Held something.

[00:13:22]There's a crab in here, guys.

[00:13:34]Oh, got him. Got him. Got him. Got him.

[00:13:42]He's attached. Come, bud.

[00:13:46]Car lose. This guy's definitely legal.

[00:13:54]Come on. If I can detach the mango route he's on, he's our crab.

[00:14:00]Come on, buddy. You got to work hard for these things. Got them. Got him.

[00:14:05]Yeah, buddy.

[00:14:25]And that's it, guys. We completed the challenge. We're right back to where we began. Sun is beginning to set now.

[00:14:33]And let's go eat this crab.