Seamus Coffey, 8, turned a Saturday morning fishing trip near Philadelphia into a Ridley Park Lake piranha catch after he hauled in a fish he first thought was a bass. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission later identified it as some species of piranha, a fish Mike Parker said is native to South America.
“I’m reeling it in, and I think there’s a bass,” Seamus said. Michael Coffey said he watched his son work the line before the fish came up looking unfamiliar. “I was like, ‘Slow down dude, you might lose it.’ This looks like something we haven’t caught before.”
Mike Parker on piranhas
Parker said the agency’s biologists identified the fish as some species of piranha. He said piranhas are tropical fish native to South America and would not have survived in Pennsylvania waters for very long.
That leaves one practical issue unresolved for anyone fishing local waters: how a tropical fish ended up there in the first place. Parker said people sometimes release exotic pets when they can no longer care for them, and he warned that introducing exotic species into Pennsylvania waters is illegal.
Michael Coffey and Seamus Coffey
Michael Coffey said he disposed of the fish humanely. Seamus said he knew what it was because he watches YouTube, and he was the one who called it out first: “It’s a piranha!”
Parker said a person who introduces an exotic species into the wilds of Pennsylvania can be fined or prosecuted. For anglers who ever pull up something unusual, this case is a reminder to treat an odd catch as more than a curiosity and to avoid putting any nonnative animal back into the water.
