(I'm cribbing from my own cruising blog on this one, but it's so bloody alarming it needs to be shared.)
Okay, they’re not “killer” in the sense of killing us all, but if the Asian carp inching up the Mississippi system succeed in making it into Lake Michigan, it’s pretty much game over for the Great Lakes. We can all pack our boating and fishing toys and go home, because there’s going to be little left to enjoy.
Asian carp are those voracious bottom feeders and nightmare stars of online videos which show huge fish leaping out of the water and smacking grown men in the head and groin as their boats pass by. This species is the doomsday weapon of the Great Lakes ecosystem. If they make it in Lake Michigan, I’m moving to Lake Superior and hoping the locks at the Sault can keep them at bay.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports (
Corps scrambling to turn up voltage on carp barrier - JSOnline) that the foreign species is just seven miles from the experimental electrified barrier the US Army Corps of Engineers has set up on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which connects the Mississippi system to Lake Michigan. So alarming is the situation that the USACE wants to crank the voltage up to 2 volts, because at the current test level of 1 volt, there’s not enough juice in the water to stop all sizes of carp. But proposed voltage increases are being met with resistance (no ohm jokes please) by the barge industry’s American Waterways Association.
“According to a memo from the Coast Guard, the canal will be shut down to boat traffic for most of Wednesday to see if the barrier can even function at two volts per inch. If the barrier passes that test, two or three days of additional safety tests are planned. Some are frustrated that the Army Corps waited until surveys showed the carp were mustering just below the barrier to begin the higher voltage tests. `If they had any sense of urgency, this would have been done long ago, instead of waiting until an emergency comes up,’ said Dan Thomas, president of the Great Lakes Sportfishing Council. `We're waiting until it may be too late.’”