A scathing piece by the Detroit Free Press:
http://www.freep.com/article/20090816/SPORTS10/908160448/1365/SPORTS/Carpe-diem-for-carp
August 16, 2009
Carpe diem for carp?
Corps' blunder could assist Asian species
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers probably has done more environmental damage to this country than any other single entity, with the exception of farming.
Its dams, canals and other projects have destroyed wetlands, wiped out fish-spawning areas, flooded valleys, caused serious erosion problems and imported more exotic animals than anyone since Noah.
I've spent half my working life in Florida and half in Michigan. Based on the ecological debacles I've seen the corps create in both states, it's clear that its modus operandi is spend money now, worry about potential long-term problems later.
That might explain why the agency failed to show much concern about the effectiveness of an electrical barrier that's supposed to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes.
The corps finally started to care a few days ago, when the carp were detected only 7 miles below the barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
If the Asian carp reach the Great Lakes, they could decimate native species like walleye and lake trout and valuable introduced species like Pacific salmon and steelhead, which are the basis of a major tourism industry.
When the "permanent" barrier was turned on in April after years of delay, the corps knew the current level was too low to stop all of the carp. Yet it was only days ago that the agency boosted the current from one volt to two and began tests to learn if changing the frequency and pulse rate would make it effective.
"If they had any sense of urgency, this 'operational testing' would have been done long ago, instead of waiting until an emergency comes up," said Dan Thomas, president of the Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council. "We're waiting until it may be too late.
"The corps and Coast Guard were cautioned back in April that operating the system at one volt would not be sufficient to stop a carp incursion. Let's hope the warning doesn't prove prophetic."
Maj. Gen. John Peabody, Commander of the Corps of Engineers Great Lakes and Ohio River Division, said in a statement, "As part of a continuing review process of Asian carp migration and the barrier system, the Army Corps of Engineers developed a multipronged strategy we have been applying since this spring."
The statement added that "as a result of that review, the Corps of Engineers concluded that information on the Asian carp was uncertain and inadequate and so (it) took action to ramp up its Asian carp monitoring program."
The barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is like most Army Corps of Engineers projects -- expensive, behind schedule, inefficient and perhaps even harmful to those it is supposed to help.
The reason it operated at such a low level was that the corps and Coast Guard were worried that increased voltage could kill someone who fell into the water near it or cause electrical arcing between steel vessels and explosions.
But it already was known that a one-volt charge would not repel small Asian carp. And if enough little Asian carp reach Lake Michigan, eventually there will be incredible numbers of 40- to 80-pound Asian carp in most or all of the Great Lakes.
Silver and bighead carp from Asia were brought to the United States about 35 years ago by Southern fish farmers to eat algae in their ponds. Eventually, the exotic carp got into the Mississippi and moved upstream to the Illinois River.
It was there that they became notorious for the silver carps' habit of panicking en masse whenever a boat went over them, leaping 3 to 10 feet in the air and often hitting people in the boats (bigheads aren't jumpers).
The carp reproduced in such numbers in the Illinois River that they displaced valuable native species like buffalo fish and suckers and put many commercial fishermen out of business.
From the Illinois River, Asian carp swam up the Des Plaines River to the Chicago canal. Created in 1904 by reversing the Chicago River to carry sewage away from the city's drinking water source in Lake Michigan, the canal offers the carp direct access to the Great Lakes.
The corps' decision to test increased barrier voltage was prompted by new research techniques that let scientists detect DNA from Asian carp in the water only 7 miles downstream from the barrier.
"People told me they saw big fish jumping in the area where they found the carp DNA. Those weren't smallmouth bass," Thomas said. "The (corps) might not have been able to net any, but you know they had to be Asian carp."
It might be time for some representatives and senators from the Great Lakes states to take a more hands-on approach to the threat from Asian carp and look closer at what the Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard have done.
The health of an ecosystem that holds 20% of all the fresh surface water in the world isn't something to be taken lightly.
Contact ERIC SHARP: 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com. Order his book "Fishing Michigan" for $15.95 at www.freep.com/bookstore or by calling 800-245-5082.
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Distributed without profit to ESA Great Lakes members who have expressed an interest in receiving aquatic invasive species information for research and educational purposes.
