When I was in high school, I had to make a video for a CSPAN competition. While all my classmates chose more obvious concepts like homelessness, violence and racism, my group focused on invasive fish. Was this a meaningful choice? In comparison to the other issues, not really. But there is a lot of suffering that has been and will be caused by invasive fish in the next few years, and I’m gonna inform you about it.
Lets talk ugly; MOST fish are cute, but there are a couple that will only ever be loved by their mothers. One of these is Asian Carp, a blanket name for a group of carp species brought from (guess where) Asia.
Not a single thought behind those eyes
These weird looking fish have become a serious problem in the Mississippi river since their introduction in the 1970s. They’ve worked their way all the way to the mouth of the great lakes, and the only thing keeping them from destroying thousands of livelihoods and hundreds of millions of dollars of fishing revenue is an underwater electric gate strong enough to fry a human.
So why can’t they be let into the great lakes? Put simply, they’re overpowered. They reproduce incredibly fast, reach sizes of ~60 lbs frequently, eat everything smaller than them and have voracious appetites. They would destroy every native fish species, including the fish that are the livelihood for the fisheries of the lakes.
The average Asian carp (lucky angler for scale)
Unfortunately, there isn’t much being done other than the electric gate to combat the rapid spread of these fish. Most anglers think that carp are too easy to catch, or that they taste cheap. Some companies have found success serving carp meat, but not the success needed to drive them into oblivion.
One of the problems with the campaign against carp is that carp don’t look that scary; a poster with “Beware the Carp” and their image wouldn’t scare even the jumpiest of people. But the Snakehead may. Brought from (you guessed it) Asia, the snakehead is another overpowered fish that our local fauna can’t seem to deal with. They can live in low oxygen, shallow, dirty water, and can even live for hours on land, time that they use to crawl to new water sources once the ponds they live in run out of fish to eat.
However, unlike the carp, the snakehead isn’t free from the lust of anglers. Prized for their fight, large size, and great taste, the snakehead is slowly becoming a sought after fish. Even in some B.A.S.S. magazines, snakehead fishing is being put forward as a surprisingly fun experience. Couple this with no size or weight limits, rewards for catch and kill, and great taste, and the snakehead has some work cut out for it if it wants to keep living in the USA.
