Michigan to offer prize in fight against invasive Asian carp

AP via Yahoo ^ | March 5, 2017 | Chris Ehrmann

[Leaning Right]

Faced with the threat that Asian carp could enter the Great Lakes, Michigan is turning to the public for new ideas and plans to offer a prize to whoever comes up with a way to stop the voracious fish.

Michigan's global search challenge comes after the U.S. government and others have spent hundreds of millions searching for a solution to stop the carp from entering the world's largest freshwater system. If they aren't stopped, officials fear the aggressive fish will crowd out prize native fish and hamper recreational boating in large sections of the lakes...

[Paul R.]

Uh...

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2015/03/13/asian-carp-nuisance-seen-ky-growth-industry/70276546/

They are in KY Lake in tremendous numbers. Apparently, they grow so big, so fast, that predators have a hard time keeping up. Not too many predators in US fresh waters are going to munch on 50 lb. or larger carp.* Gators in the South, maybe, as has been pictured... :-)

*Typically, what happens is that if many medium size fish are removed, the remainder grow spectacularly. This is the basis of many fresh water “trophy” fisheries, once the desired trophy fish species is well established. “Slot limits” are sometimes employed.

[Paul R.]

We discovered an underground hive of African Bees in my Dad’s back yard, last fall. Nasty, agressive little buggers...!

[Paul R.]

See my post #81.

I suppose piranhas might go after Asian Carp, but, that “solution” would likely be worse than the problem...

[Moltke]

They could use the water to irrigate California, so it wouldn’t be wasted. Where there is a will there is a way.

Yeah, of course I’m kidding.

[Rebelbase]

[lee martell]

“How’s that working out for us?”

[Leaning Right]

> Yeah, of course I’m kidding. <

What? I typed up your proposal to drain the lakes. And I sent it off to Michigan’s governor by certified mail. Now it looks like I just wasted $6.59.

[dfwgator]

[bert]

Interesting report

Where do you live? How far north have they migrated?

[Rebelbase]

Lemons/lemonade. Encourage it as a new sport and millions of $$ would flow into Michigan.

[Lean-Right]

From what I’ve read there
are two species of carp
invading the Missouri river.
Big Head, and Silver carp.
They both prefer to spawn
in long stretches of fast
moving water, and basically
hatch on the move.
The silver carp are the ones
that get airborne due to boat
motor vibrations.

[IamConservative]

There was an episode of Swamp People this year where Silver Carp were used as gator bait. A good food source like that could create a gator problem..

[Moltke]

OK, you got me. I was just kidding that I was just kidding.

After all, a lake is just a large swimming pool, right? And people drain and refill *those* for maintenance work all the time, right? So it’s just a simple engineering problem of up-scaling. Totally doable, totally. (Trump could get that done over Labor Day weekend. No one would even notice.) Your investment in ink, paper and postal services might pay off after all.

[BlueDragon]

Thank you for the reply. Everybody hears "carp" and they think about the common brown carp -- which is itself an invasive species. The Asian carp are simply not the bottom feeder, mud-filtering type of fish, specially the silver carp which prefer the middle and upper potions of the water column. Bighead carp will most usually be caught further down -- or so the anecdotal gillnet data generally indicates.

In fact, a big part of the problem is that because they are filter feeders of plankton and such... they eat the bottom of the food chain away from the usual small fish and critters that then support the next level, and so on. They literally starve out their competition.

There's been concern that the buffalo carp, and more importantly paddlefish along with smaller species such as gizzard shad (which are feed for larger game fish and pan fish) are undergoing deleterious effects wherever carp populations are highest (and of course, naturally enough, downstream from those locales0.

Of course you know that, already. I'm simply repeating it here to further publicize the information...

My proposal is a series of 4 or 5 of those “electric fences” along the river, leading to a downstream dam:

Which river? The Illinois? And what's with the "downstream dam" with electric fences "along the river"? I'm not seeing how that would work --- unless what you are thinking about is trapping the carp already in Lake Barkley?

If a dam or dams were to be built on the Illinois-- why not simply shut off the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (aka; Chicago Drainage Canal)? If that were to occur, if there was no dam at some point built so as to provide a spillway to ensure water flow, one big problem could be need for large pumps to transfer water from Lake Michigan to the canal downstream of the dam blockage in order to keep the upper reaches of the Illinois to Corp of Engineer's specified channel depth (9 ft.).

That would shut off whatever barge traffic there is, and possibly make the upper reaches of the Illinois left high and dry part-time during the year.

Building dams would close off the barge traffic. Unless instead of locks, there were 'dry' lifts for barges, which I guess could be costly to operate. A system such as that, where barges would be hauled out and transited on, say, a dedicated railway from water to water, would be expensive to first; build, then maintain and operate. I'm sure it's been thought of and further investigated as to costs --- so has thus far been dismissed as impracticable.

Imagine if billions of dollars were spent in some way, and waterfowl still transported carp eggs in their feathers (and stuck in their bills) to the Great Lakes regardless of all the extra, and highly expensive efforts?

Not that this will cure or fix "the problem" of Asian carp menacing the Great Lakes; but I've already been scheming upon a net design where I could wrap 'em (round haul) but without using a purse line.

I've gotten to the point where I can start counting meshes (by the stretch measure foot) to then convert those numbers into lbs. of nylon webbing (which generally runs 9$-12$ per lb, sometimes less when purchasing large amounts of factory web). But I may switch to braided web, or else even polyethylene web for the middle "sack" or bunt portion of the net -- which portion would be no bunt at all as those are known in seine net terminology, transitioning instead to a "sock" as we called that when I was fishing on a seiner in Southeast Alaska.

The sock is like the body of a miniature trawl net. Trawls I really know, having fished those for many years, and worked in net shops too, along with regular repair, rebuild, and re-hanging a variety of those when not being part of a "net shop".

The reason for using a seine (instead of the gill and trammel nets most often presently used for commercial Asian carp harvesting) is that I think I'd want to catch the fish alive, so the fish could be bled while still alive. After which; chilled/refrigerated near immediately.

Both of those steps would raise the eating quality of the fish, which in turn could (hopefully) help lead to wider acceptance of the fish among American consumers, while also fortifying what export market demands presently exist.

But all that costs money, and would be challenging to accomplish on trailerable (8' 6" width) boats, and possibly purpose-built barges. Going bigger means a person would have to go through locks when transitioning from one segment of a river to another -- and -- would led to needing offload from the boat onto a truck instead of putting a boatload of fish on a trailer and taking that to whenever it would be offloaded and sold directly to a processor, or else processed by one's own company.

Whichever way -- a guy could not be fishing full-time and processing full-time without hiring many persons to assist, which raises the question === would it pencil out (be profitable after paying wages and taxes along with each and every other expense).

If they (dang those "they" people!) would just allow me to hit the Mega for about $200 million --- I could find out if it would be profitable, or not. It would keep me out of the bingo parlors, regardless, that's for sure. :^')

[blueunicorn6]

What we do is, we have the Starship Enterprise come back in time to today.

Then, Scotty beams all these fish into the Enterprise.

Scotty says, “Captain! Thar be crap, I mean carp!”

Then they go back to the future and dump all the carp on Klingon where they take over and fight the Borg.

[BlueDragon]

Silver and Bighead -- that's what I've read. There are two more types of invasive Asian carp also, yet the numbers of those are small in comparison to silver, and bighead carp.

Grass carp --and if memory properly serves - Black carp. Anecdotal info suggests the Grass carp is better eating than the others, desirable even (instead of in lesser way simply "acceptable", sort of like tilapia is for my own tastes).

Thanks for the info on spawning characteristics.

"...long stretches of fast moving water, and basically hatch on the move."

Maybe you intended to convey "spawn" on the move instead of "hatch" on the move? But while we're at it, I'll inquire out loud; How long for fertilization to become hatchling? Seems like the little 'ol things would be far downstream when they first began swimming on their own.

Long stretches of fast water...and here I was thinking the carp maybe went for eddies to spawn in, off to the side of main flows.

[bog trotter]

I don’t think they winter well up here.
For a while, when we were having all that “global warming” you would hear of or see one occasionally.
Since winters have been getting colder I haven’t seen or heard of anyone else noticing any for 2 or 4 years.

[bog trotter]

Both my daughter and one of their neighbors dug farm ponds which were soon populated with a variety of fish.
Neither “planted them in their ponds.
We, too, figured it had to have been birds because there was no connection to another waterway.
SO, stopping the “invasion” just ain’t a gonna work.

[Lean-Right]

The eggs hatch on the move.
I don’t know how long from
egg to fry, but it sounds
(from what I’ve read) like
it may be a matter of days.
I am certainly not an
expert fishologist. They
(the silver carp) peaked
my curiosity when I witnessed
them jumping out of the water when
boats are running down the river.

[Paul R.]

I’ve pm’d you more specific location information. Here, I’ll just say that the location is a little north, but well east of the colony found along the northern Arkansas state line, back in 2007. However, this is the only instance of them in the area that I know of, so, the question is how they got there. Also, from a little research I’ve done today, I believe these are hybridized bees: They are decidedly more aggressive than the usual European variety whose hives I come across from time to time, but not wildly so.

Excellent article, here:

http://www.adkinsbeeremoval.com/africanized-honey-bee.php#17

It appears that the African bees are “evolving” (or at least adapting) as their range expands, becoming less aggressive, but also somewhat better adapted to cooler climates.