The 'new' carp barrier was scheduled to be turned on at the end of the month. Now the date to turn it on has been bumped to mid-March.
(It was built back in '06)

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/38577257.html

Great...

So eventually the only fishing to be done in Lake Michigan will be bowfishing. Why do our 'politicians' always have to wait till something goes wrong before they decide to fix it? Unbelievable.

Didn't Craptracker say that the Asian carp don't seem to be migrating much past the I-55 bridge over the Des Plaines? I think it is only a matter of time before one gets introduced into Lake Michigan.

There have been a few asian carp spotted and a couple even shot by bowfishermen as far up as the Brandon Locks in Joliet.

Old news. Took a while for many them to get past the Starved Rock dam, but now more abundant up there, although still uncommon. These fish don't like boats, and they don't do well at getting through navigation locks. But high water in 08 in the Mississippi River has apparently allowed them to bypass the locks and move on upstream- silvers and bigheads are now showing up in places they have never been before in the Upper Mississippi River. I believe that under the right conditions, when moving upstream in the spawning season, these fish can probably do at least 20 and probably 50 miles upstream in a day. The Ship and Sanitary Canal is not great Asian carp habitat, at least for living and eating. Asian carp pick entirely different habitats for living and eating than they do for spawning. During high water events, they are attracted to areas of high current and turbulence, and they will move long distances to reach those areas. That means they won't hang out in the canal, butno one knows if they will try to make the run up it during a high water event. That also means that we don't really know if the existing electrical barrier has ever been challenged by an Asian carp. It could have been challenged dozens of times during high water events (the only time it is likely to be challenged) and we would never know. We can't effectively go out and sample at those times. It also means that a power outage at the wrong time could be disasterous - the fish certainly have the capability of swimming upstream from where they have been spotted now to above the barrier and probably all the way to Lake Michigan in a single day.

The more fish show up farther up the river (and it appears to be that more fish are getting up there all the time), the more likely it is that some of them will try to make the run up the canal.

Really bad news: Duringveryhigh water events (but we are NOT talking 100 year floods - just very water that occurs on a semi-regular basis) there is probably opportunity for fish to move between the Ship and Sanitary Canal and the Des Plaines River through low spots and ditches that are normally dry but laterally connect the Canal to the Des Plaines during high water. These connections go through ABOVE the barrier. So if fish go through the ditches they will bypass the barrier. In my personal opinion, it is more likely that juvenile fish would make it through these shallow connections than adult fish (although I'm not ruling out larger fish getting through those connections). We have not seen any juvies that high up the Des Plaines yet, but spring is coming. It is urgent that these low spots be blocked. They are not hydrologically required to be connected. It is a matter of moving some dirt. And it is time to get on with it.

If the carp do make it into the Great Lakes, it is possible that it won't be a catastrophe. Or it may just be a localized catastrophe, where the carp only take up residence in numbers in places like Green Bay, where there would be substantial planktonic resources. Or they may just get out-competed by the zebra and quagga mussels. But my personal guess, and it is nothing more than that, is that they will take 20 or 30 years to reach high enough population density that people start noticing them a lot, and then things will get out of hand rapidly. That's where my money is. But treat that information like you would a prognositicator on the Super Bowl - an educated guess.

And watch how you spell that.











(Easy typo, that. I don't know how many times I have typed "bighead carp" wrong.)

heh heh.... that's a funny typo. I know I've written 'carp' that way many times.

Duane, do you know anything about the 20 million for 'fish barriers' in the proposed stimulus bill? Is this for more electric barriers? Other carp barriers? Not carp related?

I have some good ideas on how to create more market demand for the carp. I could implement itfor a mere ohhh....
$5 million or so. I even promise to create a couple jobs while I'm at it.

Interesting. I did not know about the money for the fish barriers. I have no idea what that is about. Could be related to things that Minnesota has been wanting to do for some time on the Mississippi River, or could be more on the chicago Shicp and Sanitary Canal. Or it couldbe something altogether different, like things that would deflect entrainment from power plant or irrigation intakes.

Try as we may, we can't put the Genie back in the bottle. Think about it, a little over 100 years ago when the Europeans first introduced the common carp tothe Americanwaters, I'm sure they never could have imagined that over time that particular fish would come to inhabit almost all waters from farm ponds to the Great Lakes and everything in between. Only Mother Nature will eventually determine this fish's domain in 50 years. You might slow it down but you can't stop it and so is it really worth millions of taxpayer dollars in order to delay the inevitable. I'm not sure that it is.

That is certainly a valid position to take. There is some hope that we can control or possibly even eradicate these fish with new technologies that are on the horizon. If the fish get into a body of water like the Great lakes, it will be a lot tougher, though, and also a reservoir of infection back to the Mississippi River Basin. I think it is a tough call. Another way to look at is the Great Lake fishery is worth about 4 billion a year, in 1995 dollars. No way of knowing what the value will be after the carp get going well. But assume for the momentthat the carp eventually cause a 10% drop in the yearly value of that fishery. Every year that we push that back saves us 400 million 1995 dollars. The assumption is not supportable through existing data or any other way - there are no useful models to predict the cost that bighead and silver carp would generate. It might be 0% of the value, but most people don't think so. If the value of the fishery drops 1% after bighead and silver carp invade and become abundant (if they ever do) then we save 40 million 1995 dollars per year that we stave of the inevitable.