The ecosystem of world’s biggest freshwater lake, the Great Lakes, is under serious threat from an escaped Asian carp. It is told that the Asian carps is bighead and silver in color which consumes 40 percent of their body weight daily in plankton – starving out other less aggressive species. These carps can considerably exceed one metre in length and 50 kilos in weight.
These carps pose great threat to species that are traditionally popular with anglers – a $7 billion enterprise in the Great Lakes – and commercial fishermen. In 2002, the US Army Corps placed electronic devices in the waterway south of Chicago, linking the Mississippi to Lake Michigan, intended to stave off the carp by emitting electrical pulses, or even giving the fish small jolts.
It is said that the old system was even replaced with a more powerful one this year, but scientists have now found DNA trace of the species north of that barrier, with the navigational lock on the Calumet River as the only remaining obstacle for the carp’s migration north into Lake Michigan, and then, possibly, Lake Superior, Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Cameron Davis, a senior Great Lakes Advisor with the US Environmental Protection Agency, said that they are going to keep throwing everything we possibly can at them to keep them out.
