The Great Lakes Ecosystem has been under threat of invasion by the Asian Carp and the Northern Snakehead fish for some time. Best estimates by the people responsible for preventing the influx of these two fish has always been kind of fuzzy, leading most people to believe that it was still preventable or at least several years into the future before it would reach a crisis point.
That has all changed now. I just saw a television news report about a local sport fishing woman landing a Northern Snakehead fish in what I affectionately refer to as “my local mud hole”, which a great many local divers use for training and pleasure diving.
While no Asian Carp have been found in the eastern basin of Lake Erie or in Lake Ontario yet, I have heard of reports from provincial conservation officers that some Asian Carp have been found in Lake St. Clair and in the western basin of Lake Erie for some years now. Despite a massive planned fish kill in the Chicago Sanitary Canal earlier this year in which officials dumped 900 Kg of poison into the canal which killed 90,000 Kg of fish, only one fish was found to be an Asian Carp. The Asian Carp is expected to make its' entrance to the Great Lakes ecosystem via the Chicago Sanitary Canal from the Mississippi River System.
Reports indicate the Northern Snakehead is a very hardy fish able to pursue their prey out of the water for quite some time (some say the fish can last out of water for a couple of days without dying from suffocation) and that some individual fish have come back to life after being frozen. Average size of the fish is being quoted as 1.5 metres or more. Reports also suggest that their jaws are very strong and are capable of breaking the bones of their prey very quickly and efficiently.
As far as I'm concerned, the invasion of these two fish into the Great Lakes Ecosystem will make the previous invasions by Zebra and Quagga mussel, as well as the Round Gobi fish, look minuscule in comparison (they were and still are huge impacts).
More information can be found at these links:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20100...ontario-100808/
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/publicati...1-06-09-eng.htm
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/MSNHome/20091231/carp_100101/
http://news.sympatico.ctv.ca/home/suspecte...ntario/7fe07a81
