South American Piranha Fished from River Thames
Date: 23-Feb-04
Country: UK
The 10cm-long Red Bellied Piranha was dropped by a passing seagull onto the deck of a boat built to oxygenate the river. The Thames was declared "dead" in the 1960s but, its water cleaned, it is now home to 119 types of fish.
"It was very fresh and had obviously only just died. You could see the marks made by the seagull's beak on its back," fisheries officer Tom Cousins said.
Experts were quick to reassure Londoners they need not fear marauding shoals of meat-eating fish. The reputation of the piranha is worse than its bite and despite global warming, the Thames remains too cold to support such warmwater fish.
"We imagine that it was probably released and then floated to the surface where it was picked up by one of the very hungry seagulls and deposited in the boat," London Aquarium curator Paul Hale said.