Evidence Grows That Electric Barrier Hasn't Kept Carp Out of Great Lakes

As the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to study the best ways to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, those rascally silver and bighead carp aren’t waiting to see what the agency comes up with to replace and/or complement what seems to be an ineffective electric barrier.

Here’s the latest from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

 “While it's been nearly two years since crews landed the only live Asian carp specimen above an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, DNA evidence of the jumbo carp continues to come in --- and the percentage of DNA-positive water samples taken above the barrier this year appears to have grown tenfold over last year.

“The Army Corps of Engineers reported that of the 2,378 water samples taken throughout 2011 in the canal system above the electric barrier, a total of 34 samples were positive. This year, after just one day of sampling the waters above the barrier, the Army Corps reports it landed 17 positive results from 114 water samples.

“In other words, the percentage of samples that tested positive for Asian carp DNA last year was about 1.5%. This year, so far, it has jumped to almost 15%.”

Read the full story here.

No Need to Worry About Carp Getting into Lakes? Really?

Ain't it grand? The Army Corps of Engineers says that its electric barrier --- working at just half power --- is doing a great job and so there's no worry about Asian carp getting into Lake Michigan.

And, by extension, then there's no need to speed up the five-year study on how to keep carp out of the lakes. And no need for Michigan and other Great Lake states to worry that these exotic invaders will obliterate the billion-dollary sport fishery. 

And certainly no need to even consider a permanent separation of the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed, which coincidentally happens to be opposed by the Obama adiminstration. 

And the Corps has a study to prove there's no need to worry, according to the Journal Sentinel.

Only it won't share it.

"They just seem to be hiding from public scrutiny," said Phil Moy, a former Army Corps employee who now works for University of Wisconsin Sea Grant and is the co-chair of the "technical policy and work group" for the federal government's Regional Coordinating Committee in the Asian carp fight.

 

"Good science doesn't work that way," said Moy, whose panel is packed with scientists, many of whom were instrumental in getting the barrier built in the first place. "Instead of sharing these research results, they're just sitting on them."

It's not a Carp Problem; It's a Government Problem

President Obama has just signed into law a ban on the importation of bighead carp into the United States. Isn't that nice?

When Congress passed the bill in late November, Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, said this: 

  “Along with other invasive Asian carp species, the bighead carp poses an immediate and significant threat to the nation’s freshwater fisheries, especially the Great Lakes. While normally we would list an injurious species under administrative rulemaking, the urgency of the situation called for swift action by Congress so that we can prevent this voracious fish from spreading to new areas and overwhelming recreational and commercial fisheries by effectively starving native fish.”

And, under the Lacey Act, silver carp were likewise banned in 2007.

The problem is that both species have been firmly entrenched in U.S. waters since the 1980s. And by the late 1990s, they were crowding out native species throughout the Mississippi River drainage. 

Today, they've either moved into the Great Lakes, or are about to. If they don't destroy the billion-dollar sport fishery there, it won't be because of any meaningful action by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the rest of the federal government, electric barrier notwithstanding. It will be because  Asian carp did not find the Great Lakes to their liking.

As with so much many other "actions" the government takes on our behalf, this ban on bighead carp is more about appearance than it is reality. The same goes for the appointment of a "carp czar" by the President.

Along with all of the other invasive carp species --- silver, grass, common, and black --- bighead are here to stay. They will crowd our waters, they will out-compete native fishes for food, and they will alter our ecosystems in ways that, right now, we can't even imagine.