Octopus mystery solved
Star report
August 10, 2006
 
A 21-year-old college student from Louisville has told the Louisville
Courier-Journal that he is responsible for putting an octopus in the
Ohio River - fished out on Monday from an Indiana state park - after
shooting videotape of the animal for a film project.
The newspaper reported the news on its web site today.

The student, Zachary Treitz, said he purchased it - dead - from a local
seafood shop.
The six-foot-wide octopus made headlines when a Jeffersonville, Ind.,
fisherman hooked the dead creature while angling for catfish below the
dam at the Falls of the Ohio State Park, across from downtown
Louisville.
Its discovery prompted officials to speculate that someone may have kept
it as a pet and released it - dead or alive - into the river.
Octopuses are invertebrates that live only in salt water and cannot
survive for long in fresh water.

Treitz told the Courier-Journal he had put the octopus in the river last
Sunday morning after filming it for a picnic scene in a short film
project he has been working on.

"I guess we didn't think about the interest this would cause," he said.
"It was completely surprising."