Piranha panic

When a media campaign to persuade aquarium enthusiasts to hand over their piranhas yielded only three of the voracious fish, authorities in Guangdong went about poisoning 673 specimens found in local markets.

Worried about the potential damage to local ecosystems, the fisheries department has advised piranha owners to throw the fish into their woks rather than the nearest river.

The campaign has been stepped up in an effort to teach people how to recognise the ferocious fish, which has a protruding lower jaw, razor-sharp teeth and eats anything.

A network will be set up for concerned citizens to report people who sell or rear the fish, and a maximum fine of 50,000 yuan (HK$47,600) each will apply.

The prospect of a few piranhas being set loose in the Pearl River and finding their way to other parts of the province during the summer floods is cause for great concern, given that they breed four or five times a year.

Authorities are in a panic because Guangdong's sub-tropical weather is conducive to the breeding of piranhas, which come from Brazil's Amazon basin. The fear of them destroying indigenous fish stocks is so great that fishery enforcement officers have even destroyed 33 piranhas kept in the zoo.