{"id":1232,"date":"2018-03-27T14:24:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T14:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2018-03-27T14:27:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T14:27:56","slug":"ftv-the-big-carp-pond-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=1232","title":{"rendered":"FTV: The Big Carp Pond – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In Part 1, we examined several ways that opening the Great Lakes to an ecological invasion of species began with the earliest attempts to ease transport of goods from the Atlantic Coast inland. \u00a0Using Dan Egan\u2019s book <\/span>The Death and Life of the Great Lakes<\/span><\/i> as a guide, we looked at how opening the door, so to speak, to invasive species like the sea lamprey and the river herring upset the delicate ecological balance of the Great Lakes. \u00a0Some of the invasions were intentional (like the introduction of the coho salmon in 1966) but all can be traced back to human activity. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Building the St. Lawrence Seaway was intended to turn Great Lakes ports into centers of international trade but the fly in the ointment here was the size of the locks built in the system. \u00a0The size of the ships being used to transport goods kept outgrowing the Seaway system which prevented the predicted economic boom from taking place. Entry of the sea lamprey and the river herring (also known as the alewife) into the upper Great Lakes was an unforeseen consequence of making a direct connection between the lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. \u00a0More recently, other invasive species have hitchhiked into the lakes in the ballast water of the freighters that have carried on a much smaller percentage of commerce than was predicted for the Seaway.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By 1986, the Seaway stopped collecting tolls for Seaway traffic and by 2002, the Army Corps of Engineers reported that the Seaway could only handle about 2% of the cargo-carrying capacity of the world\u2019s bulk carrier fleet and 5% of the capacity of the world\u2019s container fleet. \u00a0Shutting down this meager amount of economic activity would be a small price to pay when compared to the billions of dollars that will be needed to undo the damage that will be done by the current and future crop of Great Lakes invasive species.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When university students discovered the first specimens of the zebra mussel in Lake St. Clair, it was impossible to tell how far along the invasion was. \u00a0A quick review of the mussell\u2019s history in Europe showed that it has rapidly colonized rivers and lakes all across the region via the networks of locks and canals that had interconnected much of Western Europe. \u00a0Egan characterized these canals as having \u201callowed biological trouble to course through the continent like cancer cells in a bloodstream,\u201d much the same way the Seaway had now opened the Great Lakes watershed to invasion. \u00a0Zebra mussels don\u2019t walk, fly or swim, but in their larval stage, they can be carried by currents. With their home port 3,000 miles away from their discovery in Lake St. Clair, the only explanation as to how they got there was in the ballast of a ship bound for the upper lakes. \u00a0In truth, the adult zebra mussels can drag themselves along at a snail-like 14 inches per hour, but the rapid spread throughout the Great Lakes watershed could only be accomplished with human help. A female\u2019s one million eggs hatch into microscopic viligers that can catch currents for a few weeks. \u00a0Within a year, the surviving offspring will repeat the cycle. Even one female mussell transported unknowingly to a new location can have a devastating effect. Viligers transported in a ballast tank brought the first colonies to the Great Lakes and no doubt ship and recreational boat traffic within the lakes is helping them spread.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ten months after the discovery of zebra mussels in Lake St. Clair, mussel expert Gerrie Mackie from the University of Guelph spoke at a conference about the spread of the zebras. \u00a0Slide after slide of objects covered with clusters of mussels hushed the room. There were so many on some pier photos from Lake Erie that it was impossible to calculate a number per square foot. \u00a0When municipal water systems began to find their intake pipes clogged, they discovered the zebras attached with their own form of superglue. Costs to remove or control the mussels were estimated to be in the neighborhood of thousands of dollars per day – for one water plant. \u00a0The mussels will actually clear water as they filter feed, but trapping these nutrients can sterilize the water to the detriment of other species.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the zebra\u2019s cousin the quagga mussel was discovered in Lake Erie in 1989, \u00a0shock waves rippled through the entire ecosystem. Why? Zebra mussels live in relatively shallow water while the quaggas can exist in much deeper water. \u00a0Zebras only feed during the warm months but the quaggas feed year round. By 1989, the mussels were being found in all corners of the Great Lakes from Buffalo to Duluth. \u00a0That same year, they were found in Chicago at the head of the Chicago Sanitation and Ship Canal that has been flowing from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi River watershed for almost a century. \u00a0If the zebra and quagga mussels can spread across the Great Lakes in a matter of decades, how long would it take them to colonize the 40% of North America connected by the Mississippi Rivers and its tributaries? \u00a0As we already know, the mussels can\u2019t swim upstream, but they can certainly go with the flow downstream or hitch a ride!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 1963, a new type of weed control experiment was begun in Arkansas. \u00a0In the search for nontoxic method of controlling unwanted vegetation, the U.S. Department of the Interior\u2019s Fish Farming Experimental Laboratory accepted a shipment of live fish from Malaysia. \u00a0These grass carp were supposed to mow down the river clogging seaweed and reduce the amount of noxious poisons that had previously been used to do the same job. Another Arkansas fish farmer had imported three other types of Asian carp (black, bighead, and silver) for the same reason, but he didn\u2019t realize the blacks fed on mollusks and the bighead and silver were plankton eating filter feeders. \u00a0He offered them to the state fishery department and they hatched a plan (pun intended) to breed them to use in sewage lagoons. They were difficult to breed but eventually a Taiwanese professor named S.Y.Lin was able to help them get the breeding problem solved. They hoped to use the sale of the fish to help fund rural sewage treatment plant projects, at least until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised them that selling fish reared on human sewage was not legal. \u00a0Imagine the marketing job it would have taken to sell the product if it was legal!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The story should have stopped when the projects funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was halted, but the Arkansas Fishery division made the mother of all environmental assumptions. \u00a0They assumed that because the Asian carp were difficult to breed in a hatchery, it would be okay to release them into the wild. The bighead and silver carp spread like wildfire and as they gobbled up the plankton the native fish populations needed to support their food chain, they began to dominate the river systems into which they spread. \u00a0An adult bighead carp can reach 100 pounds and consume 20 pounds of plankton per day. The small fish that eat the plankton diminish and this results in the native fish populations who rely on the small plankton eating fish for prey also falter. Silver carp don\u2019t get quite as large as the big heads, but they do get irritated by things like the noise of an outboard motor which will cause them to launch themselves like wingless flying fish. \u00a0Some parts of the Illinois River have become dangerous places to enjoy water sports like water skiing or jet skiing for fear of being bombarded by the flying silver carp stirred up by the motor noise. Yes, the same Illinois River system that connects to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The carp are moving north and the backdoor isn\u2019t wide open, but it isn\u2019t locked, either.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0An electronic barrier has been built in the canal to the tune of $1.5 million to keep the invasive species already in the Great Lakes from spreading into the Mississippi watershed. \u00a0By the time it was activated in 2002, it was probably too late to have prevented the southward migration and it would have no effect at all on the mussel veligers. It has been repurposed (between 2009 and 2014 to the tune of $318 million) to try and halt the northward migration of the Asian carp species, but the jury is still out on how effective it may be. The only sure way to prevent invasive migrations in either direction would be to close the locks on the canal and <\/span><\/p>\n

re-establish the Chicago River\u2019s original path to the north and the Illinois to the south. \u00a0That is right; return the natural flow of the connected watersheds to where they were before the Chicago canal was ever built. \u00a0The price tag for this could reach $18 billion dollars, but $12 billion of this cost would actually be needed to rebuild municipal water and sewer systems. \u00a0To fishery biologists, this action should be a no brainer, but unfortunately, the decision is now firmly in the hands of the politicians (did I say \u2018no brainer\u2019?). \u00a0As one biologist put it, \u201cIf we don\u2019t do something soon, the Great Lakes will end up to be one big carp pond.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It took the Great Lakes thousands of years to develop the geological and biological profiles that were in place when the Europeans arrived. \u00a0It took only a few hundred years for humans to mess it up. In spite of our best efforts to play with mother nature, biology may have the last laugh in the end. \u00a0Evolution, it seems, is unfolding before our eyes. Remember the mussels? They cleared the lakes of plankton which depleted the shrimp-like plankton eaters that were the preferred food of the whitefish. \u00a0They, along with the native lake trout, perch and chubs that had been the backbone of the commercial fisherman since the 1800s, were all but starving. Ken Koyen, the last remaining full-time commercial fisherman on Wisconsin\u2019s Washington Island had to resort to marketing what had previously been considered a trash fish – the burbot. \u00a0By 2005, Koyen was ready to get out of the fishing business until he noticed something unusual in his nets: an alewife sticking out of the mouth of a whitefish.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Why would this be unusual? \u00a0Whitefish are not a fish-eaters and they have no teeth. \u00a0Not only did Koyen begin to catch whitefish with other fish in their bellies, but also mussels. \u00a0The round gobies that are a more recent Great Lakes invaders have the teeth and jaws that allow them to eat their fellow invasive zebra and quagga mussels. \u00a0The whitefish then eat the gobies and the nutrients that had been previously locked in the mussel\u2019s shells are released back into the lake food chain. The previously starving whitefish are beginning to rebound. \u00a0Before Koyen observed this change in the whitefish diet, he had noticed he was catching whitefish whose bellies were full of ground mussel shell. The mussel eating whitefish have developed a rigid muscle line on their belly that now gives them the ability to grind the mussels into digestible paste. \u00a0\u00a0Not only are the whitefish populations thriving, they are expanding their range into lake tributaries and their numbers in the open lake are giving recreational fisherman a new sport species.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is certainly enough evidence in hand to tell us that we have mismanaged the Great Lakes and will continue to do so unless we mend our ways. \u00a0One only need to look up the former Aral Sea to get a glimpse of how much damage humans can do in a short period of time. We owe it to our grandchildren to take the steps needed now to insure they won\u2019t be telling their grandchildren about the demise of the lakes formerly bestowed with the title \u2018Great\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band does their fishing song with guest Bernie Leadon – from 1987<\/p>\n