Pesky 'flying' carp causing problems in SE Arkansas
Pesky 'flying' carp causing problems in SE Arkansas
Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK - Seth Russell will have a whopper of a fish story to tell some day, but right now the whole episode is still a blur to the Crossett teen who was knocked unconscious, suffered a broken jaw and was left covered with fish guts and blood.
The 15-year-old was on a church outing on Lake Chicot last month when he and two friends decided to get on a large inner tube being towed by the church pastor's boat. As the three were being pulled across the lake, a large Silver Asian carp leaped from the water and struck Seth in the face.
"He doesn't remember anything at all," the boy's mother, Linda Russell, said last week. "He was laughing and the next thing he remembers he is waking in a hospital."
The teen has had oral surgery to wire several teeth together and appears to be on the road to recovery, although he still experiences back pain which doctors attribute to whiplash from the high-speed collision, his mother said.
Seth is among a growing number of people who have reported being hit and injured by flying Silver Asian carp on Lake Chicot in southeastern Arkansas.
"They do not fly but they are quite good jumpers," said Carole Engle, director of aquaculture and the fisheries center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
"Their jumping behavior is a problem and their population appears to be growing there," Engle said. "Over the past year we have had some calls about fish jumping and causing injuries on Lake Chicot, but the real concern is the upper Mississippi River, where their jumping behavior is causing problems and where their population is growing most rapidly."
Silver Asian carp were first imported to the United States in the 1970s for a variety of reasons. Catfish farmers brought them here to remove algae and other suspended matter from their ponds. The Environmental Protection Agency also started a program that allowed cities, including some in Arkansas, to use the fish to help clean the water in their sewer treatment plant ponds.
During flooding in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of the fish escaped the catfish ponds and sewage treatment ponds and ended up in small rivers that flow into the Mississippi River.
The carp then migrated upriver, where they are now threatening to enter Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes.
In Arkansas, Silver Asian carp have not been a problem until recently.
Mike Armstrong, chief of fisheries for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said they apparently got into Lake Chicot through a pumping plant that moves water from the nearby Mississippi River into the lake.
"There have not been any reports of the fish in the White River, the Cache River or any where else in Arkansas," Armstrong said.
Engle, Armstrong and former Game and Fish Commissioner Mike Freeze are on a national panel created to develop a plan to manage the pesky jumping fish, as well as three other types of carp causing problems for the eco-system and for boaters along the upper Mississippi River in Illinois.
Engle said the group of more than 60 researchers has met several times and once went out on the Illinois River, which flows into Lake Michigan, to see first-hand the problems the carp are causing. They saw numerous Silver Carp leaping from the river. Some even landed in their boat.
"Their jumping ability is problematic," Armstrong said.
Silver Asian carp leap out of the water when the vibrations of outboard motors startle them, according to Engle. Though the species can grow up to 40-50 pounds, it's the smaller fish, in the 2- to 3-pound range, that cause the problem. The heavier fish don't jump as high, she said.
Because researchers fear the carp could damage the food chain of native fish if they reach the Great Lakes, the federal government and the state of Illinois are about to complete a specialized underwater electrical barrier designed to keep Silver Asian carp, as well as the other three species, from getting into a canal which leads to Lake Michigan, Armstrong said.
The panel of researchers has suggested a variety of ways to control the carp population, including a ban on imports.
They also have recommended, Armstrong said, a "national in scope plan that encourages states and private industry to look to develop markets for the use of these fish."
Silver Asian carp, along with the bighead, black and grass varieties, are apparently quite tasty and are a favorite in many central European counties, Engle said. In the U.S., there has been some interest shown in using the fish to make frozen fish sticks, or in canning similar to tuna, she said.
"The commercial fisherman can catch them like fire," Freeze said,
The problem, he said, is that because of high fuel costs, commercial fishermen would need to receive 40 to 50 cents a pound for the fish, and companies willing to buy the fish want to pay 20 cents a pound.
Something needs to be done to make it financially worth their while, Freeze said.
"One possibility is the federal government maybe doing some type of subsidy," he said.
In Australia, where carp have been a problem for years, scientists are taking a different approach to managing the pesky fish. Researchers are genetically engineering the carp so they spawn only female fish live.
"The idea is that they basically breed themselves out of existence," Freeze said.
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