Chicago Plans $18 Billion Defense Against Invasive Asian Carp After Reports Of 'Dangerous' Attacks On Boaters

[link to www.ibtimes.com] city of Chicago is considering several plans to keep an invasive species of fish from overrunning the Great Lakes, including spending $18 billion to shore up Chicago’s canal system. The measure comes on the heels of several reports of Asian carp, a fish that can grow to be more than a yard long, jumping out of the water and bludgeoning boaters along the Mississippi River Basin.

“The fish have battered boaters, making rivers unsafe for water recreation,” notes the National Wildlife Federation, the U.S.’s largest conservation organization. The group is at the forefront of the effort to keep Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes. They say separating the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River Basin waterways is crucial to protecting the lakes from an Asian carp incursion.

Asian carp, which are native to Eastern Europe and Western Asia, were introduced into the U.S. in the early 1970s. The carp were used in fish farms in the south as an eco-friendly and chemical-free way to keep catfish ponds clean.

But the plan backfired when the carp entered public waterways, where their populations exploded. The invasive species now occupies open waters in 23 states, the National Wildlife Federation reports, and threatens to displace other native fish populations, including bass. In some rivers, Asian carp represent more than 97 percent of the biomass in those waters.

Furthermore, the fish pose a threat to local fisherman and boaters, who say the fish are a nuisance and even unsafe.

“It’s simply one of the most dangerous things that we’re doing, so we have to protect ourselves,” Kevin Irons, a specialist at the Illinois Natural History Survey Station -- a research institution that maintains a collection of more than 6 million aquatic and marine specimens from around the world -- said in a statement. “We can’t have a fish jumping on the throttle or a fish knocking somebody out.”

The survey station installed netting around the steering wheels and dashboards of its fishing boats to keep leaping Asian carp from damaging their equipment.

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