Asian Carp: Great Lakes Ecosystem Hanging in Balance

Reader Contribution by Cindy Murphy
Published on February 26, 2010
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Below the water’s surface lurks danger. A voraciously monstrous creature devours nearly half its body-weight each day in an attempt to cure its insatiable appetite. An unsuspecting boater enters the territory, and the beast breaches the water, violently hurling itself through the air toward the boat’s startled and horrified occupant.

Sound like another creature has risen from the Black Lagoon? If only it was so, but this creature is not fictional. Last February, I wrote about the Emerald Ash Borer’s destruction of millions of our country’s native ash trees, and now there’s another invasive species making headlines as it threatens to invade the Great Lakes Region.

It’s the Asian Carp, and it has the ability to quickly dominate every waterbody it enters … and it’s about to enter the largest body of freshwater in the world. I first heard about Asian Carp a couple of months ago when I read about a massive fish kill planned by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The kill was to take place when the electrical barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was shut down for routine maintenance. Both the barrier and the kill are efforts to keep the fish out of Lake Michigan.

An electrical fish barrier – the world’s largest, designed to keep fish from the world’s largest freshwater supply? Planned massive fish kills? Asian carp? Call it a case of being unaware until it hits close to home, but I had no idea these things existed.

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