Giant Fish Invasion Spurs Drastic Measure

The Asian carp are coming and they seem unstoppable.

The 40- to 80-pound leviathan consumes 40 percent of its weight every day and is now a short swim from Lake Michigan. It spawns three times a year and has no known predators.

It devours the plankton and algae vital to other fish including the perch and salmon of the Great Lakes - threatening a $7 billion fishing industry, CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports.

"Once they're here, there's no stopping them," said Joel Brammeier of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

The carp's journey began in the 1970s when it was imported from China to clean southern fish hatcheries of algae.

But floods in the 1990s swept them into the Mississippi and its tributaries including the Illinois and the shipping canal that connects that river to Lake Michigan.

Their signature jumping style has gotten lots of grins on YouTube.

But Colonel Vincent Quarles of the Army Corps of Engineers isn't laughing.

"We have positive results from environmental DNA (that the carp is) one mile from this location downstream," Quarles told Reynolds.

Quarles mans an $10 million effort to stop the carp in the canal with two underwater electrical barriers - but with mixed results.

The Asian carp's progress has been inexorable and anything man has done to deter it has at most only delayed it.

Now the next step: temporarily poisoning the canal to kill the carp.

These fish will have to be sacrificed, it's reasoned, so the Great Lakes can survive.

(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

At left: Employees of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources take part in a electronic fish salvage operation of game fish in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009 in Romeoville, Ill. before a toxic chemical is to be dumped on a nearly 6-mile stretch of the canal as part of state and federal efforts to keep the voracious and invasive Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes.

[rodnacious]

Its the same story every time, introducing a foreign species into our lands, lakes, and streams with disastrous results!

When will these country bumpkins learn to investigate the species before introducing them into our environments. An animal, plant, or insect without any known enemies is not what you would introduce into a pristine area... duh!

[puzzler125]

Aren't they edible? We know what they like to eat so let's figure out a way to catch and consume them.

[thesevenveils]

Bring in the genetically modified alligators. That'll fix things real good.

No predator! Wow, that's some fish

[kevin_ph]

Just like in the Philippines' Luzon Island rivers especially Marikina River... Janitor Fish though.

[chamaatlast]

good luck to the people trying to rid the lake of these large fish.

[bankersvox]

Who is going to drink the poison water ? Animals, ducks, other fish, bears and eventually us... We need to adjust to what nature gives us, not try to POISON it.

[bankersvox]

Who are we to kill this magnificent fish, just because it is too big ?? We need to adjust and allow nature to be free, and natural, not impose the will of man on it ! There is a balance to nature, not an opportunity for man to disrupt

[door331]

anyone who reads this and thinks ***? does not know how lakes are maintained. You are not marine biologist. just keep your thoughts to yourself. This kind of procedure has already been used on many lakes to rid them of foreign contamination that would otherwise destroy the habitat. Yes it means a bunch of fish and plants die but it allows them to regrow/stock the lake and keep the habitat healthy.

[jjx64]

This was a great idea. It was a great idea before they wasted $10 million on trying to stop them with electrical barriers. Another major flood or a careless fisherman could have totally defeated that kind of system. There's no time for messing around with trying to save the fish in the canal. Briefly poisoning a 6-mile stretch of canal is a minuscule sacrifice compared to profoundly disrupting life in the largest group of freshwater lakes on earth.

[rwsmith29456]

Once someone brought up the possiblity of spreading carbon particles in space around the earth to 'shield' it from 'global warming'. That made me think of this carp thing and how 'great ideas' can become MAJOR foul-ups very quickly. And once they are done, there's no way to undo them.