No, these are actual sharks, not a metaphor
Sharks!! in the Thames!!! with venomous spines!!!!: [S]harks including tope, starry smooth-hound and spurdog -- a slender fish measuring some 23 inches and covered in venomous spines -- have been found. Spurdogs can be found in deep water, and the spines in front of the shark's two dorsal fins secrete a venom that can cause pain and swelling in humans. Tope shark, which feed on fish and crustaceans and can reach 6 feet and up to 106 pounds, have never launched an unprovoked attack on humans*, according to the UK's Wildlife Trusts. Meanwhile, the starry smooth-hound, which can reach up to 4 feet and 25 pounds, mostly eats crustaceans, shellfish and molluscs.
*O dear, and there are those for whom we would not entirely deplore a Jaws-type fate and even consider it a sacrifice to the genius loci....
There are also flourishing in a river barely 50 years since considered biologically dead, seals, seahorses and eels.
How long this will last as water companies continue to behave in a way that promises to hurl us back to the period preceding the Great Stink and the situation depicted in the Punch cartoons: 'The Wonders of a London Water Drop': [P]osits the existence of a new kind of microscope known as the Molecular Magnifier, which will show you the exact chemical make-up of a drop of water down to the basest constituent. The basest constituent turns out to be London’s political class.... disporting in the liquid dirt as in their native element.
and 'Father Thames Introducing his Offspring to the Fair City of London': 'showing the extent to which theories of water-borne infectivity had gained popular acceptance in a short time'.
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