Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss They killed the river today

Chicago River, that is.

UAS Today

Chicago Sun Times

Today's Sun Times
They rotenoned a 6 mile stretch to allow the electric barrier fence to be shut down for service. My buddy delivered some barriers to where they are building a 2nd fence, he bs'd with one of the guys for a bit. He said that the new fence takes ac to dc, and it puts enough current into the water to give a 2 volt per square inch shock to whateve is in the water. There are "NO FISHING, SWIMMING OR BOATING" signs on the river.

Sounds like a new place for the mob or gangs to dump bodies.

In an attempt to kill asian carp, we kill everything.

Just seems like a strange concept to me.

Why not allow commercial netting of these fish maybe even with subsidies and encourage using them for fish meal and fish oil feed products?

Seems like such an incredible waste to rotenone them and throw them in a landfill....

The problem is if even one of these carp gets into the Great Lakes it's a disaster. Netting never gets all the fish. At least that's been my experience.

I would bet a high percentage of the fish in this river are rough fish anyway.

Agreed.

I'm thinking as more of an ongoing thing once the magic electro fence is turned back on though. Thin the numbers as much as possible BEFORE they get to the fence and maybe make a small industry out of it to boot. It seems that you could develop a pretty solid method of harvesting considering their reaction to electric current that would avoid a lot of other "good" fish in the process.

My take on it is that they killed the river so they could work on the one and only fence that's up and running. They are working on building a 2nd fence, that's where my buddy dropped off the barricades. They found asian carp DNA in the river above the working fence, since they took samples in June or July, and it took 'till a few weeks ago to get the results back, what has happened in the meantime? I wonder what they found the DNA on (or in)?

Could the DNA been carried upriver by any of the boats that went thru the electric fence?

Too bad they couldn't make a permanent barrier to fish, and have all the fish go thru a fish ladder system that would somehow separate the bad fish from the good fish, either manually or by other means. Unfortunately, I think this is a battle that can't be won.

As they said in Jaws when first seeing the shark - you better get a bigger boat. They should use every method they have if they expect to succeed.

At least now it can vote.

What do you mean "now"? It always was good for at least 1 vote, maybe more depending how far behind Daley was!

Yeah but many of the urban rivers up here have mostly rough fish in them and the rough fish are probably loaded with contaminants as they are bottom feeders. Furthermore most of our sewage plants up here receive storm drain water. That is, when it rains a lot the sewage treatment plant get deluged with water so the plants open their gates completely to the river. You couldn't pay me to eat fish out of most of our rivers in this part of the country. Sadly many of them go chocolate brown when it rains heavily too.

When I posted earlier the article on this reported by USA Today. See this thread for their article: http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=193903#Post193903

This barrier is only going to be a temp solution, for a permanent solution they need to cave in part of the canal between Lake Michigan and the river and this problem is no more from this angle. The canal was used to clean up the Great Lakes from sewage runoff of Chicago and to make the water run away from Lake Michigan. It has served its purpose and no longer needs to be connected.

Can we get bumper stickers made up that says: Save The Great Lakes From Invasive Asian Specimens...Vote To Collapse The Canal

On second thought we might need to reword that!

Hmmmmm boy I could throw an analogy on top of this one......
Bottom line I see is that change is inevitable and what you do about it can mean many things.
Sure the fishing in the great lakes may go down the tubes.
A multibillion dollar industry. But what will letting these fish take over do ? As with every change it's just fear of the unknown.
In several thousand years the great lakes will be only puddles any way!

This makes sense to me...good idea ceadmin

I am not so sure it would be easy to shut the canal as its operation is probably controlled by State compacts between the various states and the Fed. Gov. requiring everyone’s consent. Not sure of that as to the canal but inter system water transfers from the lakes to the Miss are.