Posted on 10/15/2004 7:24:14 PM PDT by Thinkin' Gal
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The dreaded Northern Snakehead, a voracious predator dubbed the "Frankenfish" that can breathe out of water and wriggle across land, has invaded the Great Lakes, authorities said on Friday.
Scientists with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources identified the 18-inch-long (46-cm-long), sharp-toothed fish netted over the weekend in a harbor near Chicago's downtown by a fisherman, who put it in his freezer and posted a photograph of the creature on the Internet.
A native of China, the Northern Snakehead was first discovered in 2002 breeding in East Coast ponds -- one of which was poisoned and another drained -- and has since been spotted in the Potomac River in Virginia, in Florida and in other places -- but not, until now, in the Great Lakes.
"These things are voracious feeders. They're a very aggressive fish," said Mike Conlin of the Department of Natural Resources. "We hope it's a stray, dumped there by somebody who got tired of feeding it."
Teams will use electric cables in the harbor to shock fish to the surface to look for more of the species, which can survive the cold Midwest winter and eats other fish, frogs and even birds and mammals. If it breeds, it could devour game fish and devastate the lakes' multibillion-dollar fishing industry.
The Great Lakes, the world's largest body of fresh water, has long been plagued by invasive species, with the latest being the Zebra Mussel, the Round Goby and the Sea Lamprey.
Earlier this week, authorities announced plans to erect an electrified, underwater barrier in the waterway connecting Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River watershed to try to stave off the northerly advance of the Asian Carp, a huge fish that gobbles up vital phytoplankton. The carp, which escaped flooded fish farms along the Mississippi, is within 50 miles of Lake Michigan.
Alarmed Asian Carp have been known to leap from the water and knock out people in boats.
The electrified barrier will be adjacent to one erected a few years ago, designed to keep the Round Goby from migrating from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi River watershed, but the effort came too late.
ooooh that's a good one!
Here's the million dollar question:
Can you eat it?
Bush's fault.
Frankens
The Frankenfish was scary enough.
does john kerry know that his wife is missing?
What on God's green earth were people raising something as disgusting as Carp in fish farms for?
A good size muskie, northern pike, or even walleye have better sets of choppers than that thing. It'd only be one gulp for a muskie.
Well if they're easy to catch and taste good they may not have much of an impact. As far as imported fish I have an article from 1908(?) that promotes the introduction of carp into the Great Lakes as a game fish. They do put up quite a fight when incidentally hooked but they're more lawn fertilizer than table fare. Local bow hunters like to shoot them off their specially equipped boats though.
Oh Yeah! I'd take the fish over Susan.
mc
Wow, that is just gross.. ewww!
Well, we've dealt with the Zebra mussel. Now this freaking fish is here and we'll have to deal with that. Why can't someone make a real frankenfish? One that eats the Zebra mussels and the Asian carp, and then swims back to China?
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