“It had legs, I’m telling you! A bloody fish with legs – and teeth. Big teeth – the bugger chased me all round the deck before I found something to beat it to death with,” Dorset fisherman Joe Clunt explains, relating his recent maritime ordeal to The Daily Norks. “We’d just brought a load of fish up in the nets and we were getting ready to dump the catch into the hold, when there was this tearing sound and the net burst open – this scaly thing came rushing out, scattering dead mackerel all over the trawler’s deck and went for me!” According to Clunt, the fish was roughly human sized and seemed to have no difficulty breathing out of water. “The rest of the crew took one look at it and dived overboard,” he recalls. “The bloody bastards! They left me to face the thing alone – they should think themselves lucky I let them back aboard after I’d killed it.” Clunt’s story has, naturally, been met with with astonishment, with a number of leading marine biologists dismissing it as the ravings of a drunk, pointing out that there is no known species of fish with fully functional legs capable of allowing it t chase a man around a trawler. They have also pointed out the lack of physical evidence to back up the story, Clunt and his crew having sold the remains of the fish as part of their catch. “Have you any idea how tight the margins are for fishermen these days?” he asks, defending his actions. “We can’t afford to be giving any fish we catch – legs or not – to bloody scientists to examine when we can get hard cash for it from the local chippie.”

Despite the scepticism of the marine biology community, Clunt’s claims of a bizarre fish attack are not an isolated occurrence. Indeed, before his story broke in The Daily Norks there had already been a series of mysterious incidents of apparently abandoned fishing boats and trawlers found drifting off of Britain’s coasts, with strange slimy webbed footprints on their decks. There were also a number of reports of swimmers at various seaside resorts claiming to have been grabbed by unseen underwater ‘things’. Whilst the latter experiences have been dismissed as simply the result the swimmers coming into contact with drifting sea weed, at least one woman has claimed to have been grabbed while only paddling. “I was up to my chest in the water off of Chesil Beach when I felt something cold and clammy grope my breasts,” claims twenty four year old Eve Froup. “I’m telling you, that wasn’t seaweed – it gave my knockers a bloody good squeeze. So hard, in fact, that they were bruised when I came out of the water.” Froup also lost her bikini top in the incident, pulled off by the maritime attacker as she tried to flee back to the beach. “I swear to God that it was a fish that molested me,” she says. “As my breasts were being grabbed, I saw its head briefly pop up out of the water – all googly eyes and leering lips – and there’s no doubt that whatever had my norks in their grip felt like fins rather than hands.” Moreover, as she made her way back to shore, Froup claims that her piscean attacker slapped her retreating behind – possibly with its tail. “I hate to think what else it might have tried if I hadn’t got out of the water when I did,” she reflects. “At one point I’m sure I felt it swim between my legs, all cold and slimy. The memory of it makes me shudder. I haven’t been able to look anything on the Sainsbury’s wet fish counter in the fishy eye since.”

The most shocking of these scaly encounters has been the alleged experience of two south coast sea anglers, who apparently had the misfortune to hook one of the mutant fish. “I was down on the beach at Keyhaven with my mate Tom, when something began to pull on his line – it was obviously huge, the way it was trying to pull free. I was sure that Tom was going to get dragged into the sea,” fifty two year old Barry Herke told The Daily Norks. “We both had hold of his rod – which was nearly bent double with the strain – with both hands as he tried to reel it in. Finally the line went slack, as if had given up, but as we prepared to land it, the bloody thing jumped up out of the water at us! Big as a man, it was! With blazing eyes and not just legs, but bloody arms, as well! As it glared at us, it ripped the hook from its mouth and contemptuously threw it aside. Obviously, we tried to run away, but Tom slipped and the thing was on him! I mean, literally, on him – it took him roughly from behind! Right up the jacksie! I’ll never forget Tom’s screams as the thing gave him one up the Khyber! It had a penis like a squirming eel! It tore right through his clothes and penetrated his council gritter!” Leaving Tom prone on the beach, bleeding from his rectum, the scaly creature screamed triumphantly, before leaping back into the sea and swimming away.

“Tom hasn’t been the same since the assault,” says Barry. “Not only has he become withdrawn and reclusive, but he has started to physically change, with his skin becoming pale and scaly. He now spends most of his time wallowing in the bath. Worst of all – the poor bugger’s started to spawn! From his arse!” But what could be the cause of these strange mutated fish and just why do they seem so Hell-bent upon attacking and molesting humans? Barry Herke thinks the reason for their anti-human sentiment is obvious. “It’s clear that the thing was pissed off at being caught on a hook,” he opines. “It was absolutely furious and it is notable that it went for Tom, who had actually hooked it, rather than me. I’m not sure its bum rape of him was in any way sexually motivated – like most rapes, I suspect that it was a power thing. Or maybe it was just instinct. I mean, you hear about those fish in the Amazon that lodge themselves in the penises of blokes pissing in the river, so maybe it was something like that.” Herne has further speculated that other fish attacks on fishermen and their vessels might indicate a co-ordinated campaign against the over fishing that reduced fish stock levels in the seas around Britain to a dangerous low.

For marine biologist Stan Lemmingford, however, the pertinent issues are just what is causing fish to mutate in this way and just why do they appear to have a sexual fascination with humans. “It could be that these mutations are the result of chemical pollution of the seas,” he says. “There’s a very real chance that all that sewage the water companies have been allowed to dump into the sea contained high levels of hormones from things like fertility treatments – not only would that explain the mutations, but also the sex mania.” Lemmingford has also advanced another theory: that the mutations could be the result of a crazed fish fetishist’s sexual liaisons with the scaly creatures. “It would explain the arms and legs, the size and the maniacal sexual attraction to humans,” he ponders. “Although there is no known precedent for human-fish interbreeding – although that Nigel Farage definitely looks a bit fishy – you just can’t rule anything out these days.”