stretching her legs today
stretching her legs today
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Posted by: Albert Bartkus
Charmayne Anderson, a graduate student from Western Illinois University, holds one of the larger Bighead carp caught in a lake in Morris, Illinois. (Evan Garcia / Chicago Tonight)
Wildlife agencies and fishermen in Illinois are using a Chinese technique to catch Asian carp, an invasive fish species threatening the Great Lakes ecosystem.
Part of what makes the Asian carp so formidable is the species’ ravenous appetite. In one day, an Asian carp can eat 20 percent of its body weight, which can reach a whopping 100 pounds. The fish deplete waters of necessary food, like plankton, for other aquatic life.
The fish were imported into southern U.S. states in the 1970s to clean the waters of aquatic farms, but flooding is believed to have eventually sent them into the Mississippi River.
The Chinese method uses a vertical net, called a seine, that’s weighted down to catch fish that have been corralled into a large, shallow body of water. The weights are eventually raised to trap the fish in the net, which is drawn tighter to haul the catch in.
There are six species of Asian carp in United States waters, but it’s four in particular—Bighead Carp, Black Carp, Grass Carp and Silver Carp—that worry scientists and policymakers. These fish are found in the Mississippi River drainage from Louisiana to Minnesota, as far west as South Dakota, and as far east as Ohio. Several states, including Illinois, have long struggled with these aggressive invaders that wreak havoc on waterways with their voracious appetites, high reproductive rates and lack of natural predators.
