Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Fly Fishing & Other Fish Species Asian Carp

I respectfully disagree with your Rainman. I've seen a bounty on common carp in a reservoir in my area that had virtually no effect on the common carp, which are easier to catch. Of course that was angling and not nets. I just don't think you can compare a prolific fish that produces thousands of eggs per female to coyotes.

BTW, it was a 700 acre reservoir with over 300 lbs. of carp per acre. You do the math.

How much was the bounty?

Dang, the amount of these things i have banked, if they gave me a bounty on them, i could be a thousandaire. or at least a hundredaire.

Well, somebody would at least owe me a fivespot.

Perhaps aggressive stocking of fish large enough to eat small Asian Carp (Musky?) combined with a per-pound bounty on larger carp will help the rivers.

If it's any consolation, LMB are becoming a popular food fish in China, and have made their way into some reservoirs there. The spread of invasive species goes both ways.

What next? Largemouth Asian Carp?

That would be an interesting hybrid...

Here is some more news for the reading:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100719/ap_on_bi_ge/us_asian_carp_great_lakes

What I've read about these asian carp is that they are no relation to the carp family we are all used to, and that asian carp are fantastic eating. They have big bones in them, so you can't fillet them, but you cut them in nuggets and strip the meat off the large bones when you eat them. I would like to try them.

Asian Carp might be good eating, but the destruction they are causing sure leaves a bad taste.

Help us out up north here and catch a few million! Check out the redneck fishing tournement for an idea of how dangerous Asin Carp are.

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. These horrible fish seem like a ready source of protein for making Purina Aquamax to me.

It's Official We Now Have A "Carp Czar"!



U.S. names Asian carp czar

September 8, 2010

The White House has tapped a former leader of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Indiana Wildlife Federation as the Asian carp czar to oversee the federal response to keeping the invasive species out of the Great Lakes.

On a conference call today with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and other congressional leaders, President Obama's Council on Environmental Quality announced the selection of John Goss to lead the near $80 million, multi-pronged federal attack against Asian carp.

"This is a serious challenge, a serious threat," Durbin said. "When it comes to the Asian carp threat, we are not in denial. We are not in a go-slow mode. We are in a full attack, full-speed ahead mode. We want to stop this carp from advancing."

Asian carp, which have steadily moved toward Chicago since the 1990s, present a challenge for scientists and fish biologists. The fish are aggressive eaters, consuming as much as 40 percent of their body weight a day in plankton, and frequently beat out native fish for food, threatening those populations.

They are also prolific breeders with no natural predators in the U.S. The fish were imported in the 1970s to help wastewater treatment facilities in the South keep their retention ponds clean. Mississippi River flooding allowed the fish to escape and then move into the Missouri and Illinois rivers. Some species can grow to more than 100 pounds.

The challenge for Goss, who was director of the Indiana DNR under two governors and served for four years as the executive director of the Indiana National Wildlife Federation, will be to make sure millions in federal money is spent efficiently, to oversee several on-going studies -- including one looking into the possibility of permanently shutting down the Chicago waterway system linking Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River--and to bring together Great Lakes states currently locked in a courtroom battle over the response to the Asian carp threat.

"Certainly there are some legal questions that are in process, but there has been a history already of good cooperation among the states," Goss said. "I believe that will be one of my strengths, talking at the level of the department of natural resources in each of the states so that we can very carefully coordinate our efforts."

Today also marks the second day of what is expected to be a three-day hearing in federal court in Chicago to deal with Asian carp. Michigan and four other Great Lakes states are suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to try and force closure of two shipping locks in the Chicago waterway system that could serve as a barrier to keep Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan.

Testimony on Tuesday focused on the reliability of the environmental DNA research that has been used to track the movement of Asian carp through the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal as they have inched closer to Lake Michigan. The architect of the research, University of Notre Dame scientist David Lodge, said the method is sound and that Asian carp pose a "a very imminent risk of invasion." He added that such "invasions are often irreversible."

Attorneys for the defense countered that the DNA research has never been used in this manner and was unreliable. They argued that even scientists disagree about the likelihood that Asian carp are capable of sustaining a large and destructive population if allowed to enter the Great Lakes.

LINK:

Oh, good, another czar. I was getting worried that none had been anointed, er, I mean appointed, in awhile. The government is now on top of it, so we can all rest easy on this issue!

LOL@Todd!

This certainly spells the end for the Asian carp in America... If the Feds are on the case, you know they'll solve the problem and with as little cost as possible. I can now thankfully breath easier!

80 million down the drain.

Haha, so true.

My bet is that a fair chunk of the $80mm will go toward the expansion of an Australian project that seeks to control carp by genetically introducing a "fatality gene", which can be chemically "triggered" (with an otherwise benign substance) to selectively induce death once sufficient time and reproduction-rates have allowed the fatality gene to permeate the carp community.
I know it sounds like a potential sci-fi thriller, but it's true. The Aussies have been working on it for several years in hopes of curbing their massive carp populations.

Kelly,

We have done the same thing with mice in our University Biotech Lab. It isn't a new technique by any means, but that is the first I have heard of it in a population control application. Hadn't heard of that, but I am hoping that it works. It is realistically, in my opinion, the only shot we have.

It can be extremely costly to develop a transgene that is effective and reliable; however, in this instance it would be worth the trouble.

The red tape will present itself in the form of public concern. People are going to have health concerns about the introduction of a foreign transgene into a fishery.

These health concerns usually revolve around allergies or other risks that may develop in response to eating a "never before eaten protein".

Other fish will eat the carp, and it not only needs to be safe for them to eat, but also safe for us to eat both the fish that consumed the carp, and the carp itself.

Until conventional animal agriculture is given the green light to utilize transgenic techniques (Cattle, Swine, etc), there is a very close to ZERO probability that we will use this to control carp populations.

I don't think that is going to even have a chance to happen within this decade given the general population's fear of transgenics (both founded and unfounded).

I hope I am wrong.

Very interesting assessment Gflo. I can certainly believe the listed challenges & obsticles.
But, as you stated, it is likely the only viable option on the horizon.
BTW: Can you imagine the stench once the "trigger" is pulled?

My philosophy is the truth is always somewhere in the middle. The media and ignorant people will always accentuate the negative, while a corporation will be on the other end of the spectrum and tell you there are no worries whatsoever.

Kelly,

The stench would be terrible lol. I imagine they would have to have boats out on the water just for carp collection.

Cecil,

As an animal science student I can tell you that the truth as far as transgenics is concerned really is in the middle. The biotech corporations, which provide jobs for animal scientists, always have a profit motive when transgenics is involved.

For example: A new Phytase enzyme can be introduced into a pigs genome. The swine industry touts this as why the use of transgenics in animal agriculture can be beneficial. They boast that eutrophication of soils and pollution could fall a staggering 50% if they are allowed to use this "green transgenic technology" in their sows.

They expect the average citizen to recognize that this is good; however, what they do not want you to recognize is the profit motive behind this.

You have to think, why would they want to lower the phosphorous emissions from their swine? The answer is profit motive. What they aren't telling you is that the pigs will pollute the environment 50% less per head, which means they are going to double the number of pigs they can produce at that operation.

How does this help the environment if the overall pollution is the same? It doesn't, but it allows them to raise more animals and still be within EPA guidelines if the transgenic swine are allowed.

But on the other hand, this could lower the price of putting food on the table.




The most controversial front in transgenics is actually its use in fish.

Sure, you can make them sterile and say they wont escape, but they will.

Sure, research says that the transgenic fish are not as "fit" as native fish; however, their increased growth rates allow them to extract more nutrients out of an environment. They don't have to out-compete their "natural" same species cousins in order to kill off other species. They just have to eat so much that there isn't anything left for other animals.

Also, the "sterile" transgenic fish are not always sterile. Don't quote me on this, but something like 1 in every 250,000 that are sterilized can still produce viable offspring. It only takes 1 to ruin the gene pool of native species.

But on the other hand, we can use this same technology to control populations of unwanted species as Kelly has pointed out.

We can also use it to confer disease resistance to livestock.

With the bad, there is some good. I am usually stuck somewhere in the middle as far as transgenics is concerned. Maybe a little more towards giving the green light.

Just found this news story.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/we-can...area=technology

A biotech firm is trying to push to get transgenic salmon FDA approved.

The story appears to be a bit biased towards the use of transgenics, but it is pretty informative. They cover some of the other potential uses of transgenics that we talked about, but it has nothing to do with what the company is trying to get FDA regulators to approve.

It is obvious in this instance it is all about the profit motive.

Make sure to read the last few sentences. They really downplayed the potential negative impacts.

I found the fact that growing this particular salmon requires an even greater harvest of wild fish as feed resulting in a net loss of the protein available worldwide quite enlightening...and hidden.