This aggressive fish is a formidable threat to native species.
Ryan Hagerty/USFWS
Silver carp jumping in the Fox River.
As fish tales go, this one is a catch: In Southeastern rivers and lakes, schools of large catfish-like bottom feeders are terrorizing anglers, boaters and skiers by leaping out of the water, sometimes 10 feet in the air, and smacking them with the force of their heavy bodies.
The strange part about this tall tale is that it’s no exaggeration, but a true story about silver carp, one of four invasive species causing major issues for native fish, other critters and folks trying to enjoy a laidback day on the water.
“You’ll see [the carp] mostly when boating traffic is in there,” says Allan Brown, assistant Southeast regional director of Fish and Aquatic Conservation for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Whether the motor in the water triggers their jumping, we don’t know. But those [videos and photos] are not photoshopped, unfortunately. … And if one of those 70-pound fish hits you, it can do some damage to you.”
Ryan Hagerty/USFWS
Juvenile Bighead Carp
The exotic fish, which surfaced in Southeastern waterways in the 1970s, were originally imported from Asia by private aquaculturists to help clear weeds and algae from catfish ponds and wastewater treatment facilities in the lower part of the region. When the area flooded, the carp escaped into the Mississippi River and its tributaries and kept swimming upstream into the Tennessee and Cumberland. About a decade ago, large groups of the fish landed in Barkley and Kentucky lakes in southwestern Kentucky. They are now found in 45 states.
Although black and grass carp are spreading too, it’s the larger bighead and silver, a.k.a. “flying carp,” that pose the greatest problems, according to Brown. In addition to scaring the heck out of boaters and sometimes injuring them, they devour the food that sustains native fish like crappie and largemouth bass and gobble up threatened and endangered mussels and snails that help clean the freshwater ecosystem.
“More anglers are coming in contact with them,” says Brown, who last year addressed the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about federal efforts to control Asian carp in Kentucky. “And I think that some of the states that are heavily impacted, especially in the Southeast, are seeing decreases in recreational species because the carp are outcompeting our native species.”
This, in turn, negatively impacts the local economies of the communities that depend on the dollars that fishing and boating reel in.
But the most significant danger, Brown says, is that, unlike most fish, they can spawn multiple times per year, wreaking extra havoc because of their sheer numbers.
In conjunction with other state and federal agencies, universities and nonprofits, and as part of a massive effort by 28 states to control Asian carp under the umbrella of the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association (MICRA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working to slow migration into new rivers and lakes as the carp head deeper into the Blue Ridge and elsewhere. Biologists are using next-generation technologies to monitor their range and assessing the populations in West Virginia and Tennessee to see how they might be physically removed.
Ryan Hagerty/USFWS
Bighead carp have large “gapes” or mouths compared to any other species of carp.
One large-scale experiment is underway at Kentucky’s Barkley Lock and Dam, where the hope is that a sound and bubble deterrent system—it works kind of like an ultrasonic device that scares mice away—will keep the fish from moving upstream.
Eradication is the ultimate goal but, says Brown, “that is going to be very, very difficult. It’s a very long-term process and very costly over a number of probably decades. … Getting them down to a manageable level is probably the end goal, keeping the numbers low enough where they’re not significantly impacting native species and human safety, so you don’t have 500 of them jumping when you try and go boating on Lake Barkley.”
The story above appears in our July/August 2019 issue. For more subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you for your support!