The recent appearance of a new invasive species shows just how easily an even worse invader could make its way into the Great Lakes. Rebecca Williams reports the invaders are hitching a ride in the ballast water of foreign ships:
Transcript
The recent appearance of a new invasive species shows just how easily an
even worse invader could make its way into the Great Lakes. Rebecca
Williams reports the invaders are hitching a ride in the ballast water of
foreign ships:
The new shrimp that’s here is called the bloody red mysid. Scientists say
the shrimp eat tiny organisms at the bottom of the food web… and could
compete with fish for food.
Steve Pothoven is a fisheries biologist with the Great Lakes Environmental
Research Lab. He discovered thousands of the shrimp near Lake Michigan.
“They’re originally from the Ponto-Caspian region, which is the Black and
Caspian Seas. The Ponto-Caspian is the same region that zebra mussels,
quaggas mussels are from, gobies, so that’s the region we’ve got a lot of
the more recent well known invaders.”
Scientists have an eye out for another invader from that same region. It’s
called the killer shrimp. It’s known for biting and shredding its victims…
and doesn’t always eat what it kills. Some scientists are worried if it
gets in, the killer shrimp could cause even more devastation to the Great
Lakes food web.
For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.