Divers Probed For Giving Fish Champagne

[matcom]

<snip>

WARSAW (Reuters) - Three Polish divers faced a police investigation Thursday for possible illegal fishing and animal abuse after a news photo showed them plying a freshly caught pike with champagne at an outdoor New Year's party.

"They may have committed offences of poaching and maltreating a fish," said Maria Niedziolka of the National Fishing Authority, which notified police of the incident.

The picture in Nowa Trybuna daily showed three frogmen neck-deep in a lake, with one of them tipping a bottle of cheap Russian bubbly into the fish's open mouth.

One of the divers told news agency PAP that they had found the pike half-dead and wanted to "restore it to consciousness by treating it with champagne."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=573&e=1&u=/nm/20040108/od_nm/odd_poland_pike_dc