After 30 years of warnings they could decimate native Great Lakes fish species if they ever got this far, the Asian Carp may be at the doorstep. Scientists have detected carp DNA upstream from an electronic barrier south of Chicago. Net stop: Lake Michigan.
If the silver and bighead carp make it into the Lakes, the cost to recreational and commercial fishing could run into the billions, dwarfing the impact of past invaders like zebra and quagga mussels, the spiny water flea, sea lamprey, rainbow smelt, round goby and rusty crayfish.
An Environmental Protection Agency official said a worst-case scenario foresees the gigantic carp spreading "like a cancer cell" through the lakes. The carp can exceed four feet in length and weigh more than 100 pounds. They consume up to 40 percent of their body weight daily in plankton, starving out smaller and less aggressive species, the EPA said. They also are known to porpoise out of the water and injure fishermen.
Given the shaky state of the Great Lakes after waves of invasives over the past 20 years or so, biologists worry the carp could be a last straw.
What makes this so much worse is the extent to which we brought this on ourselves and, when faced with the threat, how ineptly the federal government responded.
The carp escaped from fish farms in the South in the 1970s where they were being used in federally funded sewage treatment experiments; they turned north and never stopped.
Environmentalists and biologists have been warning for years and years that they could decimate the Great Lakes if they were allowed that far.
It's akin to being run down by a barely-moving train in an ocean of asphalt -- you saw it coming a long, long way away and did nothing.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally built a temporary electronic barrier south of Chicago some years ago, but only this year turned the switch on a larger, more permanent fence.
Until recently, however, neither one was run at a voltage -- 4 volts an inch -- that would repel juvenile carp because the Corps worried about possible effects on fishermen and barges. Now they worry. About barges.
After realizing the carp were closer to Chicago than they thought, the Corps recently created a "crisis action plan" that calls for turning up the power -- as soon as safety tests are completed. What nonsense.
Besides turning up the voltage, there is talk of building another barrier and poisoning the river, all of which sounds like desperation.
Without a minor miracle, we're facing a carp invasion that should never have happened.
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