Bighead Carp

This past June a bighead carp was reeled in near Lake Michigan, and it seems highly likely that it spent just about its entire life in the Great Lakes.

This whopper of a fish, weighing in at 9 kilograms, was reeled in in Lake Calumet on the 22nd of June this year. This was the first Asian carp which was reeled in on the wrong side of the electric barriers placed underwater strategically near Chicago to help prevent this invasive species from moving up the Mississippi River system and make its way into the Great Lakes.

Scientists at the Illinois Aquaculture Center, in conjunction with researchers at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Fisheries, were analyzing the chemical markers in the inner ear bones of the carp and just released their results this past Thursday.

As fish mature, their bones take in the chemicals from their ambient surroundings, and will contain the unique chemical footprint of where the fish had made its home.

“It is very plausible that this fish originated in the Illinois River and then moved or was transported to Lake Calumet or Lake Michigan during the early portion of its life,” the Illinois Aquaculture center’s director, Jim Garvey commented during a session..

The assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, John Rogner, has said that the results from the tests indicate that the fish may have been put into the Lake by humans.

It has been known that East Asian Buddhists sometimes let fish go as a practice of their religion.

For this reason, the sale of Asian carp has been banned in Ontario and many U.S. States, and their transporting them live across state lines is also prohibited.

bighead carp

Permanent barrier against the invasive species of fish, will not be constructed in the Chicago area.

Governor Ted Strickland is getting about half of what he pleaded the White House to do in a July 8th letter about the Asian Carp problem. As you know, the Asian carp are entering into Lake Michigan, and if not stopped, it could become a colossal problem!

“They are going to be naming a carp commander,” explained the legislative liaison for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Trish Lanahan. “It’s important to have someone in an executive-level position at the White House.”

Time is quickly running out, giving the upper hand to the devastating pair of invading fish known as Asian Carp. These two fish are more commonly known as the bighead carp and the silver carp, and have already taken over many areas of the Mississippi River drainage after craftily escaping their fish farms a few decades ago.

Something obviously needs to be done.. However the jury is still out as to what. Something which definitely is not being considered as a viable solution, despite the opinions of Ohio executives, is building a permanent barrier at Chicago, beginning no later than the 19th of August.

Ohio, in conjunction with other great lake States, got a lawsuit on the roll Monday, which is aimed at forcing the government along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close off the canal without any further deliberation.

On Thursday, all the big players got together to announce their plans to sit down to analyze economic and environmentally friendly solutions to effectively separate the Mississippi basin from the Great Lakes at Chicago.

Neither species of the carp is though to have gotten a stronghold in Lake Michigan. If they did have a stronghold there, that would render any sort of barrier useless. If they do get themselves a stronghold, it could take a few years before the invading carp can get themselves set up in Lake Erie.

The major concern is that the carp, as with other invasive species, could spread like wildfire through ship bilge and ballast water. The dumping of ballast is not really monitored properly, and certainly not enforced.

However, Chicago isn’t the only one to show concern.

The Silver carp have been slowly creeping their way up the Wabash River in Indiana. There is a bit of wetland that separates the headwaters of the Wabash and the Maumee rivers in Indiana. Biologists from both Indiana and Ohio are examining whether or not if the flooding which occurs there, might just give the carp a chance to jump into the Lake Erie basin.

“I don’t think it’s the threat’s immediate, like Chicago,” the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s program administrator for Lake Erie, Roger Knight said. “It might be another avenue they can use to get in.”

Well if that is the attitude taken by all sides.. That the “threat is not imminent” then it will be too little too late to help get rid of this problem.. One can hope a plan of action is formulated quickly.

Bighead carp

The latest plan of action for getting rid of the Asian Carp (a very invasive species that could potentially throw the entire Great Lakes Ecosystem out of whack), comes from Governor Pat Quinn.

Illinois is going to be entering into a special deal with a Chinese meat processing company, known as Beijing Zhuochen Animal Husbandry Company and also with Big River Fisheries located in Pearl, Illinois, to remove 30 million pounds of this horrendous fish from Illinois rivers. Big River is in charge of processing, packaging and shipping the carp to Zhuochen, who will then resell it in international markets, where Asian Carp are considered quite a tasty dish. It is hoped that the company will be able to reel in at least 30 million pounds by the end of 2011.

“We believe the people of China who like to eat Asian carp will find this is the best anywhere on Earth,” Quinn boldly told the press earlier.

The environmentalists, who have been pulling their hair out since June when a Bighead Asian Carp was reeled in in Lake Calumet, were not at all impressed by the idea. They say that it is at best a way to buy time, and at worst a tactic which will kill the fishing industry.

“Many communities have been robbed of their ability to use and fish on the Illinois River by the slow response to limit the Asian carp’s infestation,” explains Henry Henderson, the Natural Resources Defense Council Midwest Director, “Governor Quinn’s announcement will be welcome news for people in places like Peoria, where it might help them get their river back. But our goal for the Illinois River should be to eradicate this dangerous invasive species, not manage a fishery.”

Concerns are wildly mounting over the presence of Asian carp near Lake Michigan, United States Senator Dick Durbin has bequeathed Obama to elect a Carp Czar, to oversee the efforts to help keep these Asian invaders out of the Great Lakes.

During a news conference at the Shedd Aquarium, Durbin implored.. “We need to have one person who coordinates the efforts of the federal, state and local agencies that are doing everything they can to keep the Asian carp out of Lake Michigan, We believe it’s absolutely essential.”

This was Durbin’s response relating to the amazing discovery of a bighead carp, which is predominantly found in Asia, during the routine sweeps this week at Lake Calumet. The reason this discovery was so alarming is that Lake Calumet is only a stone’s throw away from Lake Michigan.

Durbin is sticking to his guns, lobbying with environmental advocates who have proposed closing Chicago area locks as a way to prevent this carp from getting itself into Lake Michigan. Durbin has called the occurrence “game changing” and has been quoted as saying “we have to take it very seriously.”

Durbin has said that scientists will attempt to find out just exactly where these Asiatic invaders have come from, whether they were dumped into the system, or if it swam its way up the Chicago water system. This will be critical in determining just how many of these Asian carp are making there home in the waters depths.

For the first time, a viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV or VHSv) has been identified in fish from Lake Superior, the largest of the five Great Lakes of North America.

The virus was identified by researchers at the Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and the finding has also been confirmed by the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle.

The virus causes viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) in fish and can result in significant losses in wild and captive raised fish populations.

“VHS is one of the most important diseases of finfish,” says James Winton, a VHSV expert working at the Western Fisheries Research Center. “It not only affects the health and well-being of populations of several important native fish species, but it can also impact trade, and, should it spread into the U.S. aquaculture industry, could do substantial damage as happened in Europe and parts of Japan.”

The infection is one of only nine fish diseases that must be reported to the World Organization for Animal Health. Until 2005 it was not known to exist in the Great Lake system but that year it caused several massive die-offs. Since then the virus has been detected in all of the Great Lakes except Lake Superior, and was for instance the culprit when 40,000 freshwater drums died in Lake Ontario over the course of just four days. In addition to the Great Lakes, the virus is also present in the rivers of Niagara and St. Lawrence and in inland lakes in New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Previous genetic research carried out by scientists in Canada and the United States show that the VHS virus was probably introduced to the Great Lakes during the last 5-10 years.

Experts now fear that current federal and state restrictions placed upon the movement of fish and fish products won’t be enough to prevent the virus from reaching native fish in the 31 states of the Mississippi River basin.

The invasive Asian carps seem to have bypassed the electric barrier built to protect the North American Great Lakes from potential ecological disaster.

Bighead and Silver carp DNA has been found in the Calumet River, Des Plaines River and at the confluence of the Calumet Sag Channel and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, federal and state officials announced Friday.

U.S. authorities regularly test for Asian carp DNA in suspended particles floating in river currents in this region, and positive test results have now appeared less than seven miles from Lake Michigan.

The carps are believed to have jumped over the electrical barrier commonly referred to as the “last line of defense” for the Great Lakes.

Authorities are now trying to locate the carps and catch them.

Why are the Asian carps such unwelcomed visitors?

The Asian carps wreck havoc with the native ecosystem by outcompeting local species for food.

They were deliberately brought to North America by catfish farmers to keep farm ponds clean, but managed to escape into the wild during a series of powerful flooding incidents in the 1990s. Since then, they have gradually expanded their range up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

Massive fish death is planned for the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, historically known as the Chicago Drainage Canal, in northern United States.

Starting early next month, authorities will inject the powerful fish poison Rotenone into a five-mile stretch of the canal; from Lockport Locks to the electronic barrier system near 135th Street in Romeoville. The government wants to stop Asian carps from entering the Great Lakes while one of the electronic barriers is shut down for routine maintenance.

Completed in the year 1900, the canal is the only shipping link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system, and the aim of the mass killings is to save the Great Lakes ecosystem from the Asian invaders that have found their way into the manmade waterway.

Two species of Asian carp – the bighead* and the silver** – were imported by catfish farmers in the 1970’s to remove algae and suspended matter from the catfish ponds. During the early 1990s, large floods in the area made farm ponds overflow, giving the carps a chance to escape into the Mississippi River basin.

Since then, the carps have steadily made their way up the Mississippi river and are today the two most abundant species in parts of the system. They outcompete native species and cause starvation in large native game fish by devouring such large amounts of plankton.

Introducing rotenone to the canal will kill all fish, not just the Asian carps, and this has naturally stirred up some controversy. The poison is said to be safe to people, pets and other wildlife in the area, but no one should eat any fish killed by the chemical.

The plans to poison the canal were announced during a special telephone press conference Friday afternoon with members of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

“This plan has been developed with input from many biologists and scientists who all agree this is the best course of action,” said John Rogner, assistant director of the IDNR. “All of the (dead) fish will be removed and disposed of in our landfills. The clean up will take a couple of days and the cold water should remove any odours.”

Electro-fishing techniques will be used to remove and relocate as much game fish as possible from the canal prior to the release of the poison, and there are also plans to restock game fish in the area afterwards, as soon as chemical accelerants have been applied to remove the rotenone from the water.

* Bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis)
** Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix)

In an effort to curb the population of invasive Atlantic sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) in the North American Great Lakes, researchers are now testing a “love trap” in northern Michigan.

The traps will be scented with an odour produced by male lampreys during mating and researchers hope that this smelly love potion will lure female lampreys into the traps.

“We are trying to fool them into a fatal love,” said researcher Nick Johnson who will spend the next three years evaluating the effectiveness of the method.

The traps will be placed in ten streams around the Great Lakes, since lampreys swim into streams when it’s time to mate. After spawning, they die.

The Atlantic sea lamprey is native to the Atlantic Ocean but has been able to migrate into the Great Lakes through man-made shipping canals. The first specimens where seen in the region as early as the 1830s. By the 1950s, lampreys had decimated native populations of lake trout and white fish by rasping through their skin and sucking out their blood and bodily fluids. Several other populations of large and commercially important food fish had also been severely damaged by the new resident.

Since 1955, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have worked closely on the Great Lakes Fishery Commission to control the Atlantic sea lampreys, using lampricides (substances toxic to lamprey larvae), migration barriers, and sterilization of male lampreys. Hopefully, the new pheromone scented traps will prove an efficient addition to their arsenal.

In a new study on Tanganyika cichlids, three scientists[1] [2] [3] from Uppsala University in Sweden have shown that intricate rearing behaviour varies with brain size in females. The only previously published study showing similar patterns concerned predatory animals.

Tropheus moori – one of the species used in the study. – Picture www.jjphoto.dk

How the vertebrate brain has developed throughout the course of evolution is still not clear, and we are still not certain if brain functions in a specific species develop to match a demanding environment. One way of learning more about this is to compare brain size and structure in closely related species living under dissimilar circumstances.

“It is important to look at differences between males and females since females often distinguish themselves from males, both in behaviour and appearance”, says Niclas Kolm, lead-author of the study.

The study looked for correlations between brain size and ecological factors in a large number of specimens from 39 different species of Tanganyika cichlid. Lake Tanganyika is especially suitable for this type of study since it is inhabited by cichlid groups exhibiting significant dissimilarities in both brain structure and ecology, and whose ancestry is well known. Tanganyika cichlids varies dramatically from species to species when it comes to factors such as body size, diet, habitat, parental care, partner selection, dissimilarities between the sexes, mating behaviour, and brain structure.

The result of the study showed a correlation between brain size and the two factors diet and parental care behaviour. Species where only the female fish cares for egg and fry turned out to have bigger brains than species where both parents engage in parental care. The brain was however only larger in females; there was no difference in brain size between males of the two groups.

The largest brains of all were found in algae-eating cichlids. These fishes live in environments characterized by a high level of social interaction. “This indicates that social environment have played a role in brain development”, says Kolm.

The study was published in the web version of “Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B” on September 17. You can find it here (http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/j114062824820l76/).

A video about the problem Asian carp causes.

part 1

part2