Asian carp may have breached an electronic barrier designed to prevent the giant invaders from upsetting the ecosystem in the Great Lakes and jeopardizing a US$7 billion sport fishery, officials said on Friday.
Scientists recently collected 32 DNA samples of Asian carp between the barrier and Lake Michigan in waterways south of Chicago, although the fish have yet to be spotted in the area, said Major General John Peabody of the US Army Corps of Engineers.
If the feared bighead and silver carp have got through the US$9 million barrier, the only remaining obstacle between the carp and Lake Michigan is a navigational lock on the Calumet River.
Some DNA was found as close as 1.6km south of the lock and 12km south of the lake.
Still, federal officials insisted a Great Lakes invasion was not inevitable.
“We’re going to keep throwing everything we possibly can at them to keep them out,” said Cameron Davis, senior Great Lakes adviser to Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
MONSTROUS
Asian carp escaped from Southern fish farms into the Mississippi River during 1990s flooding and have been migrating northward since.
The monstrous creatures can 1.2m long and 45kg. They consume up to 40 percent of their body weight daily in plankton, starving out smaller and less aggressive competitors.
Aside from decimating species prized by anglers and commercial fishers, Asian carp are known to leap from the water at the sound of passing motors and sometimes collide with boaters.
A worst-case scenario envisions them spreading “like a cancer cell,” he said, eventually dominating a fishery already damaged by zebra mussels, sea lamprey and other exotic pests.
In 2002, the Army Corps placed an electronic device on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a man-made waterway south of the city that forms part of a linkage between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan.
NEW DEVICE
A more powerful device went online this year.
Both emit electrical pulses designed to repel the carp or give them a non-lethal jolt.
David Lodge, a University of Notre Dame invasive species expert, confirmed the presence of DNA of bighead and silver carp in the Cal-Sag Channel, between the canal to the Calumet River and in the river itself, which flows into Lake Michigan.
The newer electronic device is scheduled to be deactivated for maintenance early next month. Officials plan to treat a 10km section of the canal with a fish toxin to prevent Asian carp from advancing.
Environmental groups called for tougher action, including closure of all Illinois gateways and locks leading to Lake Michigan.
That would draw opposition from barge companies.
“If we don’t close the locks, we are waving the white flag and allowing one of the greatest ecological tragedies to occur,” said Jennifer Nalbone of Great Lakes United.
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