The police officer who claims his team found a pool full of ‘sharks’ swimming around a Christmas tree in a flat admits he was mistaken - they were actually goldfish.
Sussex Police were called to the ground-floor apartment in Haywards Heath on Friday and were shocked to find the bizarre makeshift aquarium in the front room.
Despite being early October, it had an artificial Christmas tree in the middle - with what the officer said were sharks underneath.
Mid Sussex Neighbourhood Policing Inspector excitedly Darren Taylor reported what his team found.
He wrote on Twitter : "Just when you think you have heard it all! Team attended a premises over the weekend, only to discover a 8ft swimming pool in the front room.
Have you ever mistaken a harmless pet for an apex predator? Let us know in the comments
"In the swimming pool (apart from water) were small sharks swimming around and an artificial Christmas tree in the middle! I kid you not!"
But some fin was not right - well, the officer got it badly wrong.
The red faced officer has since deleted the tweet after his discovery went viral around the world.
Now, in a statement, the force said it had a chance to review the incident in more detail and they were in fact goldfish, not sharks.
"Officers were called to a neighbour dispute and not a disturbance as has been reported," they told Metro.co.uk.
"Several types of goldfish/fish commonly kept as pets, were found in a children’s paddling pool fitted with pumps and filters, not a swimming pool, and none were sharks.
"The property landlords were contacted over concerns about the volume of water in the property, but there were no concerns over the welfare of the fish.
"We are not releasing any further information about the incident and are not waiving copyright control over photographs that were on the tweet which has since been deleted. No further use of the images is permitted."
The quirky comments flowed freely after last week's announcement.
John Lawrence said: "I bet their "Jaws" dropped when they saw that."
Deanna Pennington commented: "Please tell me someone started up the chorus for Baby Shark."
