Killer carp approach Great Lakes

[Diva27]

Originally Posted by Undine

Which?? Curling or the carp! :-)

I was talking about curling. But we might as well try to deal with the carp while we're at it...

[Boasun]

Carps? Do Carps Curl?

[Boasun]

But to add they should have a bounty on the carp. Maybe one to four dollars. We all know that politicans will need to be pushed hard by sports fishermen in order for this to happen... And if the SICK minds in wash. DC want to spread the wealth then this is a good way to do it.

[bobmcgov]

Originally Posted by Boasun

... they should have a bounty on the carp. Maybe one to four dollars.

Should mean sweet profit for my carp-farming startup. I've been raising them in kiddie pools out back, feeding them on scraps I liberated from dumpsters behind McDonalds and Applebees. Weight gains have been awesome. Every evening I walk out and give a long blast with an airhorn, just to watch all the carp leap panicked into the air. It's funnier than Tennessee Fainting Goats!

I was planning to extort money from cities and states by threatening to release jumping carp in their lakes unless they paid me ... mwahhahahhaa! ... one MILLION dollars. But now I can just breed them and rake in the bounty money, perhaps I will abandon Evul Plan A. Or perhaps ... not. Mwaahaaahaa!

BTW, my Carp Cricket skills have improved markedly since I built what amounts to a batting cage in my yard. Some may scoff and say it's the difference between Tee Ball and standing in against Randy Johnson. But I know better. When I go out on an airboat, those haters will watch in awe as I slap carp after carp onto the river banks. Hit for six!

ETA: Research suggests the reason these fish fling themselves at boats is depression. That's right -- these fish have realized how ugly they are, that they will never find true love, and so they are acting out the fish equivalent of Anna Karenina throwing herself under a train. What we need to do is introduce a large number of Kissing Fish into affected waters. Dinner, movie, a little suckey-facey ... no more desperate emo fish concussions.

[Diva27]

I'm cribbing again from my own cruising blog, but it's the easiest way to post new info. Dan Egan at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel provides an update (Carp barrier tested for higher voltage - JSOnline) on how things are going with the carp barrier on the Chicago canal that’s the last line of defense in keeping the invasive species from reaching the Great Lakes and wreaking sundry havoc. It doesn’t fill me with confidence. Here are a couple beauty revelations.
•The contractor that built the barrier for USACE dropped a wee bombshell in the spring when it revealed that the system would have to be shut down every six months for maintenance. While it’s down, an old experimental low-voltage system will have to stand guard.
•The current system might have to be dialled down from the required higher voltage levels whenever water temperature tops 80 degrees. That’s not unusual in the canal. External chillers might fix that.
•The USACE does have a twin barrier under design, but it isn’t supposed to be operational until 2011. The corps says it’s hoping to have it running instead by late 2010. By then of course it might be too late.
It just may be a matter of time before this species takes over the Great Lakes. "I'd prefer to think that [an invasion] isn't inevitable," said Mike Weimer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We'll see in the near future what shakes out.”

[sailortjk1]

I agree, this is a very serious situation.
I do hope the Army Corp is successful in their efforts, other wise we got a sh%t load of problems.

[bobmcgov]

Even if the barrier works perfectly, there's good odds some idiot will carry a livewell full of carp over to Petosky or Marquette and dump them in because "Them carp's good fishing!" That's how Lake Trout wound up in Yellowstone lake, among other places. Some rube figured he'd make his own little fishery. Of course, the lakers have eaten native cutthroat to near extinction....

The Army Corps of Engineers are certainly stars of the make-it-up-as-you-go-and-deal-with-consequences-later hall of fame, but they do have private competition.

[Bene505]

This just came over DrudgeReport.com. The article is here: U.S. names Asian carp czar - Chicago Breaking News

U.S. names Asian carp czar
September 8, 2010 10:57 AM

The White House has tapped a former leader of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Indiana Wildlife Federation as the Asian carp czar to oversee the federal response to keeping the invasive species out of the Great Lakes.

On a conference call today with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and other congressional leaders, President Obama's Council on Environmental Quality announced the selection of John Goss to lead the near $80 million, multi-pronged federal attack against Asian carp.

"This is a serious challenge, a serious threat," Durbin said. "When it comes to the Asian carp threat, we are not in denial. We are not in a go-slow mode. We are in a full attack, full-speed ahead mode. We want to stop this carp from advancing."

Asian carp, which have steadily moved toward Chicago since the 1990s, present a challenge for scientists and fish biologists. The fish are aggressive eaters, consuming as much as 40 percent of their body weight a day in plankton, and frequently beat out native fish for food, threatening those populations.

They are also prolific breeders with no natural predators in the U.S. The fish were imported in the 1970s to help wastewater treatment facilities in the South keep their retention ponds clean. Mississippi River flooding allowed the fish to escape and then move into the Missouri and Illinois rivers. Some species can grow to more than 100 pounds.

The challenge for Goss, who was director of the Indiana DNR under two governors and served for four years as the executive director of the Indiana National Wildlife Federation, will be to make sure millions in federal money is spent efficiently, to oversee several on-going studies -- including one looking into the possibility of permanently shutting down the Chicago waterway system linking Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River--and to bring together Great Lakes states currently locked in a courtroom battle over the response to the Asian carp threat.

"Certainly there are some legal questions that are in process, but there has been a history already of good cooperation among the states," Goss said. "I believe that will be one of my strengths, talking at the level of the department of natural resources in each of the states so that we can very carefully coordinate our efforts."

Today also marks the second day of what is expected to be a three-day hearing in federal court in Chicago to deal with Asian carp. Michigan and four other Great Lakes states are suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to try and force closure of two shipping locks in the Chicago waterway system that could serve as a barrier to keep Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan.

Testimony on Tuesday focused on the reliability of the environmental DNA research that has been used to track the movement of Asian carp through the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal as they have inched closer to Lake Michigan. The architect of the research, University of Notre Dame scientist David Lodge, said the method is sound and that Asian carp pose a "a very imminent risk of invasion." He added that such "invasions are often irreversible."

Attorneys for the defense countered that the DNA research has never been used in this manner and was unreliable. They argued that even scientists disagree about the likelihood that Asian carp are capable of sustaining a large and destructive population if allowed to enter the Great Lakes.

--Joel Hood

[Boasun]

Haven't PETA & ICE got into this fray about harming those poor fish and the illegal immgration of the Asian carp?
I still say you should put a bounty on those fish... 1 to 4 dollars apiece.
A Carp catching touriment... How many can you catch while they are in the air? Big big prizes for this.
sterilization program of all of the male carp.
Introduce Nile Perch or snake head fish to eat them. Then you have to anilate the Nile perch and the snake head fish.

[Bene505]

I like the bounty idea. Except you have to put a time limit on it or people will just raise them for the bounty. Say 3 month period.

It would bring domestinc jobs too .

Regards,
Brad