WKSU News: Obama Administration announces long- and short-term fight to keep Asian carp from Great Lakes

Monday, February 8, 2010 Obama Administration announces long- and short-term fight to keep Asian carp from Great Lakes Invasive fish thrive on shallower water like Lake Erie

Asian carp

The Obama Administration is pledging more than 78 million dollars to fight the spread of Asian carp from the Mississippi River into the Great Lakes.

Monday's announcement followed a meeting by EPA and other administration officials with Great Lakes governors, who fear the massive fish is about to leap through Chicago shipping channels into the Great Lakes. The fish can devour more than half its weight and has no predators here. The governors are concerned it will destroy the $7 billion Great Lakes fishing industry.

Nearly a billion of that is in Lake Erie alone, and Charlie Wooley of the National Fish and Wildlife Service says the carp already have been found in the shallower water of Lake Erie.

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To be concerned that the fish already have established in the Great Lakes waters, Wooley says biologists would have to see multiple sizes of fish, which would indicate they’re breeding.
The federal money will come from the Great Lakes Restoration funds and efforts will include netting, electroshocking, chemicals and DNA verification.