A Chinese city is on the alert for piranhas after two people were attacked in a river. China is offering about 160 dollars reward for every fish caught, dead or alive.

A one thousand yuan has been offered to anyone who catches a piranha after the fish turned on Zhang Kaibo. The Liuzhou city government has also declared the river off-limits to swimmers while the hunt goes on for the flesh-shearing fish, believed to have been illegally imported for exotic aquariums.

One of the victims – Zhang Kaibo from Liuzhou in the south-west Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, has reported he needed stitches in his hand after 3 of the fish attacked him as he washed his dog in the river. He managed to grab one, but it died shortly after he took it home.

Hunting piranhas in China / two people attacked in the river Li Jiang by the dangerous fish

Piranhas are native to South America and the Chinese local fishing department says the killer-fish piranha may have been smuggled to China. The weather in southern China is similar to the Amazon, so the fish were able to adjust to the local climate.

Importing piranhas for exotic aquariums is banned in China and other Asian countries due to fears the fish will enter local waterways and breed rapidly without predators. The authorities have also given out free pork and other meat for the fishermen to use as bait, while a ban on using fishing nets in parts of the river that flow through the city has been temporarily lifted.

Zhou Quan – a spokesman for Liuzhou government, has assured the state-run China Daily newspaper : ‘ Residents in this city have no need to worry about piranhas in the Liu river. ‘ He said the piranha could not kill humans and could not live in water colder than 15 Celsius degrees – giving them little hope of surviving and reproducing.

Dangerous piranha in Chinese river / 160 dollars for every caught fish

Authorities nonetheless trawled the river with a vast meat-baited net, but failed to find the piranhas among the ten kg of fish they caught. They hope the 1 thousand yuan bounty will spur amateur fishermen into action.

But other experts warned that the piranhas had no natural predators in China. Dr David Morgan – an expert on freshwater fish at Murdoch University in Australia said that there have been cases of piranhas recorded in parts of the United States and other countries outside South America, so this case is not a one-off . He added : ‘ It’s bad news if you introduce non-native species into a new area because you may never get rid of them. ‘

The Legal Daily said that media had previously reported that deadly piranhas were on sale in Chinese markets. The fishery bureau at the agriculture ministry even issued an urgent circular ten years ago, requiring local governments to control piranhas.

However no piranhas have yet been caught in the hunt in China.

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