Into The Future, A Commentary
Let The Carp Wars Begin
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my experience
taking ordinary carp (Cyprinus carpio)
from a pool on the lower
Allegheny River at the western edge of the county. The Allegheny,
technically the longest
river in the United States (as reported in The Bradford Era,
Bradford, PA, Tuesday, May 27, 1997) has its headwaters here in Potter
County.
Now, from no less than The Wall Street Journal, we find
that another species of carp (Hypophthalmichthys
molitrix),
accidentally released into the Mississippi River and having now
migrated to the waters of 15 states, are threatening not only to
seriously upset the aquaculture of the rivers and Great Lakes of the
Midwest, but also pose a physical threat to boaters, water skiers and
fishermen.
Physical threat? Comeonnow…
According to
John J. Fialka, author of “High-flying carp pose threat to fishermen”
in the November 8, 2006 issue of the WSJ,
Betty DeFord, an avid fisherman and an owner of a tavern in Bath, IL
thought it was funny when the fish first started jumping into her boat
four years ago. But then one day when she and her husband ran
into a school of them they “had these fish flying out of the water so
fast and so viciously, “ she recalled. “One slammed into my
lap. Another nearly knocked me out of the boat. Then
another knocked me back into it. When it was over, we had 32 fish
in the boat. We were slimed from head to toe. It was real
scary.”
“The skittish, torpedo-shaped carp reproduces faster
than indigenous fish and beat them out for food. They also have a
peculiar habit: upon hearing the rumble of a motorboat, or any other
noise they deem strange, they leap as high as eight feet into the air,
arcing into and around boats like silvery missiles,” according to
Fialka.
Duane Chapman, a fish biologist, also quoted in
Fialka’s story, says “this isn’t funny any more.” He has been
repeatedly battered by 20-pound flying fish, which he compares to slimy
bowling balls. Recently, an incoming fish slammed into his boat’s
throttle, sending the skiff roaring into a mud bank.
And they are in the Allegheny River watershed!
Silver carp have thrived in the Mississippi and are invading all of its
tributaries (including, of course, the conventional Ohio River and
(eventually) the conventional Allegheny river, essentially one single
water system). They are ravenous eaters, consuming up to 40 percent of
their own body weight in plankton each day. And they are bullies,
pushing out weaker, native species. In the ten years since they
were first detected in the Missouri River, they have become the most
abundant species in some parts of the Missouri watershed.
Mrs. DeFord’s solution? The first ever ‘flying
carp rodeo.’ Dubbed the “Redneck Rodeo,” it is held on a
backwater of the Illinois River near her tavern. Fishermen don
protective gear ranging from plastic garbage bags to football helmets
and compete in small boats using hand held nets. The team
snatching the most fish out of the air in three hours wins $300.
At the third annual rodeo, in September 2006, 78 boats caught 1,840
silver carp. One contestant got a broken nose and black eye, but
came back from the hospital, finished the tournament and vowed he’d be
back next year. At the end of the day everybody went back to her
tavern, drank beer, and ate catfish. The carp were hauled to the
landfill or ground up for fertilizer.
However, “James Sneed, a retired computer engineer
from Hollywood, S.C., thinks there is money to be made in silver carp,”
according to the Fialka story. Sneed “is lining up investors and
scouting sites for a processing facility that would turn the carp into
surimi, a popular fish puree flavored to taste like crab or lobster
meat. We want to harvest in the tens of millions of pounds per
year. That’s the only way you can really knock these populations
down.”
He may be right. According to David Schaper,
writing for National Public Radio’s popular show, All Things Considered, in an
article entitled “Asian Carp: Can’t Beat Them? Eat Them,” some Illinois
River fishermen are beginning to show a profit from the slimy fish. “We
used to fish for Buffalo and other stuff,” says Orion Briney, but now
he focuses his fishing on Asian carp. Since he started fishing
for carp, Briney says he’s doubled his income. He sells his catch
to Schafer Fisheries, a processing plant in Thomson, IL. Mike
Schafer, owner, says he sells more than 2 million pounds each year –
mostly to Asian-Americans in California, New York and Chicago.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency website the threat of invasion of the Great Lakes by these fish
is so serious that already millions of dollars have been spent to
prevent it. The Army Corps of Engineers spent $2.2 million in
2002 to erect an electrical fish barrier as a study project on the
Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal near Romeoville, IL in 2002. A
permanent barrier estimated to cost $9.1 million has been funded.
Talk about unintended consequences.
Introduced, with the approval, if not outright encouragement, of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to the U.S. in the ‘70s to control
algae in catfish farms in the South, they escaped during the
Mississippi floods of the 1990s. And now millions of dollars of
taxpayer money gets funneled back to the Army Corps of Engineers, the
very agency who many think is responsible for the flooding of the
Mississippi in the first place.
I probably won’t live long enough to see the silver
carp in the lower Allegheny, but I have no doubt that they will show
up, despite the barrier of the Kinsua Dam. As the population
increases, there is the likelihood that their eggs will be sooner or
later be picked up by the legs of wading birds and webbed feet of ducks
and deposited throughout the vast watershed of the Mississippi, Ohio
and Allegheny Rivers. Exactly the same way that brand new un-stocked
farm ponds are populated with pan fish, bass and trash fish.
But what a boon for the fishing lure manufacturers,
including our very own well-known Gaines Poppers, on the other side of
Denton
Hill! Fish that can leap as high as eight feet into the
air. And we shouldn’t be restricted to large flowing rivers like
the Illinois. Here in Potter we could do it wading style in those
large pools on the lower river. We need nets, we need lures that can
excite the silver carp as effectively as motorboats, we need “team
fishing,” buddies, husband wife duos – one to locate and force the fish
airborne, the other to expertly snatch it from the air. Certainly
with our high tech capabilities a battery-powered “sonar” type lure can
be devised to do the first part of the job. And we have Kevlar
and all sorts of high carbon alloys and compounds to create the ideal
net and provide good protective gear for the team members. With
no limits imposed on the catch by the Fish Commission, team-carp rodeos
could become a staple of the tourist industry. Teams with the
largest catch could win an all expenses paid excursion to the Windmill
Farm. What a blast!
Better yet, if we could rename the critter and bring
it to the table as a sought-after delicacy – something on the order of
fresh caught Atlantic salmon – then the process would be
complete. How about “Allegheny Sole,” eh?
Silver Carp
(Hypophthalmichthys
molitrix)
Sources:
“High-flying carp pose threat to fishermen,” by John J. Fialka, Wall
Street Journal, November 8, 2006
“Asian Carp: Can’t Beat Them? Eat Them,” by David Schaper, All
Things Considered, July 12, 2006, National Public Radio. www.npr.org. Click on Health and
Science, search for Asian Carp. Includes a video: Watch Asian
Carp Leap Out of the Water as a Motor Boat Goes By
US Environmental Protection Agency website: http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/invasive/asiancarp/
US Fish and Wildlife website: http://www.fws.gov/midwest/LaCrosseFisheries/projects/asian_carp_silver.html
Copyright November 16,2006 Thomas P. Dewey
