The Asian Carp Invasion

From the Milw Journal-Sentinel

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

...Beyond all the industrial fouling, in recent decades the lake has also endured a type of biological pollution; invaders such as zebra mussels, alewives, sea lampreys and gobies are among the 182 Great Lakes foreign species that are steadily strangling what's left of native fish populations.

...The darting silver carp are getting bigger every year, ballooning in some cases to 20-pound missiles that literally launch out of the water as high as 10 feet when irritated by the whir of boat motors. They have hit so many unsuspecting boaters that locals are parking their Jet Skis, deflating their inner tubes and adjusting to the notion that their kids will grow up on a changed and increasingly menacing river.

...The truth, much of it buried in Malone's personal papers housed in the archives at the University of Central Arkansas, is that there are loads of tax-funded culprits tied to the four species of Asian carp - bighead, silver, black and grass - that have now invaded U.S. waters. By and large, the people who unleashed these fish on our environment were well-intentioned government and university biologists who thought they could find a job for the giant foreign fish that are so devastatingly good at stripping nutrients from the waters.

Their goal was to replace chemicals with carp. It was to employ the fish for weed control, or to give them a job cleaning up sewage lagoons and chronically fouled waters on fish farms. They also hoped to cultivate a fresh food source for an increasingly crowded planet.

...The filter-feeding mollusks have also increased water clarity, which has spawned outbreaks of rotting algae, at times rendering Lake Michigan beaches useless and producing a stink so wretched it does what was unthinkable just a few decades ago - it can make you pity the people who live in the million-dollar mansions on the lake bluffs.

There are more ominous impacts; in some places on the Great Lakes, mussel-induced algae blooms have triggered botulism outbreaks that have killed tens of thousands of birds.

Zebra mussels have also been implicated in increased levels of a toxic blue-green algae called Microcystis, which produces a poison that can cause liver damage.

And now there is the looming arrival of filter-feeding Asian carp, dubbed by some the 100-pound zebra mussel.

...The result is a "ridiculous situation" in which the old barrier is failing and the new, more robust barrier can't be turned on, said Phil Moy, an invasive-species expert with University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute and co-chairman of an advisory panel trying to get the new barrier built.

...The Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council's Marks looks a few decades ahead, and he can already see the heads shaking. Thirty years ago, we were foolish to let the Asian carp loose, but at least we could claim ignorance as far as the dangers the fish posed. We can claim that no more, but the last chance to stop them before they spill into the world's largest freshwater system looks to Marks like an opportunity botched.