US kills fish to stop Asian carp invasion
Source: Agencies |
December 5, 2009, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
United States authorities scooped up poisoned fish floating to the surface of a Chicago-area waterway on Thursday in an operation designed to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes and prevent an ecological disaster.
Illinois officials said a single Bighead carp, one of two prolific species of Asian carp viewed as a threat, had turned up in the huge fish kill that began overnight along 10 kilometers of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal southwest of the city.
Mississippi woes
Poison was dumped into the waterway so maintenance could be performed on an electrical barrier that is designed to keep the carp out of the Great Lakes.
The Asian carp was found some 64 kilometers from Lake Michigan, which was the closest to the Great Lakes the species has been found, authorities said.
Some 90 tons of dead fish are expected to be collected, weighed, inventoried, and dumped in a landfill over the next few days. Most of the dead fish scooped up have been native carp and shad.
Silver carp and the Asian Bighead, which can weigh more than 45 kilograms, have come to dominate sections of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
Authorities fear that if the carp swim up to the Great Lakes, the largest fresh-water resource in the world, they could create an "ecological disaster" by consuming the bottom of the food chain and ruining the lakes' US$7 billion fishery.
Since the 1990s floods allowed the carp to escape into rivers from research facilities and commercial fish ponds in the South, where they were introduced to clean away weeds and other detritus, the carp have multiplied and become a "nuisance species," according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Illinois officials said a single Bighead carp, one of two prolific species of Asian carp viewed as a threat, had turned up in the huge fish kill that began overnight along 10 kilometers of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal southwest of the city.
Mississippi woes
Poison was dumped into the waterway so maintenance could be performed on an electrical barrier that is designed to keep the carp out of the Great Lakes.
The Asian carp was found some 64 kilometers from Lake Michigan, which was the closest to the Great Lakes the species has been found, authorities said.
Some 90 tons of dead fish are expected to be collected, weighed, inventoried, and dumped in a landfill over the next few days. Most of the dead fish scooped up have been native carp and shad.
Silver carp and the Asian Bighead, which can weigh more than 45 kilograms, have come to dominate sections of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
Authorities fear that if the carp swim up to the Great Lakes, the largest fresh-water resource in the world, they could create an "ecological disaster" by consuming the bottom of the food chain and ruining the lakes' US$7 billion fishery.
Since the 1990s floods allowed the carp to escape into rivers from research facilities and commercial fish ponds in the South, where they were introduced to clean away weeds and other detritus, the carp have multiplied and become a "nuisance species," according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
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