Asian Carp threatens Lake Erie recreational fishing
Written by Olivia Minnier
Lake Erie stands a substantial risk of being infiltrated by invasive Asian Carp, after the fish have been found in other areas of the Great Lakes.
Originally imported into the United States to assist with pest control within the pond water in fishing farms in Arkansas during the 1970’s, all four varieties of the species have now entered the wild, as the Great Lakes Fishery Commission states.
The silver variety poses the most threat to the Great Lakes and have been found in about 16 other states other than Ohio as the National Wildlife Federation found in 2011.
Asian Carp pose a huge threat to the natural ecosystem of the Great Lakes because the filter feeders or “bottom feeders” can consume up to 20% of their body weight in plankton and can grow to giant sizes of up to 100 pounds, as the National Wildlife Federation states.
Rich Carter, the executive administrator of the fish management group for the Ohio Department of Wildlife, says that they are a big risk due to the food they consume.
“Big Headed Silver Carp have the capacity that they are filter feeders so they filter the microscopic plankton from our waters and that microscopic plankton is the same food that our young sport fish eat,” he said.
This would cause a huge upset to the ecosystem of Lake Erie.
“So if they were to get into Lake Erie where we have very valuable fisheries full of Walleye and Yellow Perch, in particular, the Big Headed Silver Carp could out compete or potentially out compete those young fish for food and thereby impact their population,” Carter said.
Lake Erie is in great danger for the fish infiltrating as it is the warmest of the Great Lakes, making it the most productive, as Sea Grant Michigan has found. The 2006 Fish and Wildlife survey also states that it is the most popular for recreational fishing with 37 percent of Great Lakes anglers primarily fishing in the area.
Ohio, along with Michigan, are now taking steps to help prevent the species from infiltrating into the Great Lakes. The state of Michigan received a large amount of funding to help control carp within Lake Michigan. Ohio’s budget however, isn’t quite as extensive and heavily reliant on outside sources.
“With respect to Michigan, I think one of the things we have to recognize is that Michigan gets five million dollars for invasive species control, so Ohio’s program isn’t quite as robust as that. We really rely heavily on Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding… That’s what we use to do all of our Asian Carp prevention efforts,” said Carter.
Carter said that without the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding, “we would have to find other ways to make this happen.”
Darren Bade, associate professor of biological sciences said that the best way to keep carp out of the lakes is prevent them from traveling into the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal, a man made waterway connecting the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River, which flows into the Mississippi River. It also altered the flow of the Chicago river, making it flow away from Lake Michigan.
“Ultimately what would be great to do would be to simply close that, to put a barrier across to not allow anything, water or fish to go through that canal,” Bade said.
However, this solution could pose economic problems as the canal is primarily a shipping canal.
“Simply closing that, you might say ‘well couldn’t you just ship this stuff through trains or semi trucks, but the problem is that it’s not easy and would cost a lot of money,” Bade said.
Different methods have arisen to block the carp, that allow shipping to occur, but will block the fish, such as electrical barriers.
“Fish can notice electricity in the water and either be directly killed by it or they can simply just be just sort of scared away from the area,” Bade said.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://reportingpublicpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2015-Distribution.pdf” title=”Asian Carp Distribution”]
