After a concerned call to a local newspaper prompted a ban on bathing, coastguards in Dover and France have revealed that a large crocodile sighted in the English Channel was actually a piece of wood.

Officials have said that the wood probably did look like a salt water crocodile from a distance. ‘It is easy to be clever with hindsight. It’s not every day you get a
crocodile alert, so we had to be very careful. Perhaps too careful’, a spokesman for Boulogne council told the Daily Mail.

Swimming in the sea in and around Boulogne-sur-Mer in France
was suspended on Friday as a precaution while a search was conducted.

The claim of a crocodile sighting was made in a message which had been sent to a local newspaper, La Voix du Nord.