Interview: Asian Carp

  • Asian Carp can weigh up to 100 pounds and are notorious for jumping out of the water and injuring boaters. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The US Supreme Court has turned
down a request from Michigan and
other Great Lakes states. They
wanted the locks in a canal to
be closed immediately. That man-made
canal artificially connects the
Mississippi River system and the
Great Lakes. For now at least,
those locks will stay open to cargo
traffic. This fight is all about
a fish, a type of Asian Carp, that
many people don’t want to get into
the Great Lakes. Lester Graham
spoke with David Jude about the
threat of the fish. Jude is a
research scientist and fish biologist
at the University of Michigan:

Transcript

The US Supreme Court has turned
down a request from Michigan and
other Great Lakes states. They
wanted the locks in a canal to
be closed immediately. That man-made
canal artificially connects the
Mississippi River system and the
Great Lakes. For now at least,
those locks will stay open to cargo
traffic. This fight is all about
a fish, a type of Asian Carp, that
many people don’t want to get into
the Great Lakes. Lester Graham
spoke with David Jude about the
threat of the fish. Jude is a
research scientist and fish biologist
at the University of Michigan:

Lester: We keep hearing if this fish gets into the Great Lakes system, it will be devastating for the ecology of the lakes, ruin the commercial and recreational fishing. What is it that all these people think this Asian Carp fish will do to the Great Lakes?

David Jude: Well, I am sure they all watch the video where the fish are jumping out of the river, in the Illinois River, and harming some biologists and some people that are there.

Lester: Smacks them in the head!

David: Yes, so they are very concerned about that. And then biologists are concerned about the fact that they have taken over the river there, they are very voracious feeders, and so they have really crowded out a lot of other fish in the river. So there are a lot of things that are going on with regards to impacts on humans as well as impacts on fish communities that we certainly don’t like.

Lester: And these are big fish, they are up to 100 pounds.

David: Exactly.

Lester: There’s this electric barrier in place in the canal that is supposed to prevent these Asian Carp from swimming from the Mississippi River into the Great Lakes. Environmentalists say that there’s still too much of a risk, too many scenarios where the fish could get through because of flooding or some other scenario, and that canal should be closed. The Obama Administration is fighting that, the state of Illinois if fighting that, they say we need that open. There’s barge traffic carrying steel and rock and gravel and grain, all of this seems to be coming down to money. Is money the right measure when we’re looking at this situation?

David: No, it’s not. I mean traditionally, we’ve gone into the, a lot of these decisions are made and the environmental costs are not taken into consideration. The costs of having that canal open are going to be very very high and, uh, and you have to balance it against what the sport fishery and the commercial fishery is the Great Lakes is going to be because once they get in there it’s going to be a very detrimental impact on them.

Lester: This fish is knocking at the door, we’re not even sure it’s not already in, so, is there a certain inevitability that this fish is going to be in the Great Lakes and we should just start making plans to deal with it?

David: Well, I don’t think it’s inevitable and I think if we did stop them and somehow were able to shut down the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal and prevent that avenue, we’d go a long way toward preventing them from coming in. The other avenue for them getting in, of course, is people that like to eat them and they might bring them in and stock them. So, I think we should be doing everything we can right now to stop them, I mean this is our opportunity to do that. But, the other part of it is, because they’re so close, and because as you know there probably could be some in the Lakes already, you know, we should be prepared to have some plans on what we might want to do to try to, you know, focus on some of these optimal spawning sites and see what we can do to keep their populations down there.

Lester: David Jude is a research scientist and fish biologist at the University of Michigan. Thanks for coming in!

David: Oh, my pleasure.

Related Links

Asian Carp Update

  • Charter boat captain Eric Stuecher says Asian Carp will likely ruin his business. (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:

Transcript

A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:

There’s one way to look at this as a purely economic story. In one corner you’ve got the people who ship cargo by water.

“Lynne Munch, senior vice president regional advocacy of the American Waterways Operators.”

She says, if the Illinois is forced to close two of the locks in the Chicago canal permanently, more than 17 million tons of cargo will have to be shipped by truck instead of barge, and hundreds of jobs will be lost.

“One company alone has reported that they will lose 93 jobs next year if the locks are closed. One of our towing companies estimates they’ll lose more than 130 jobs if the locks are closed.”

In the other corner, you’ve got the seven billion dollar tourism and fishing industries.

“Oh hi, I’m Eric Stuecher, I own a company called Great Lakes Fishing Charters.”

Stuecher takes people out on the Great Lakes and in rivers across Michigan. Salmon, Trout, Perch, you name it, he’ll help you fish it. But if the invasive Asian Carp get into the Great Lakes?

“It would probably cost me the business. They’ll eat anything they can get in their mouths, to the demise of so many of our other game fish.”

So that’s the economic side of the story. But what if we told you there’s more at stake here than dollars and cents.

“In terms of environmental impact, the Asian carp have the potential to seriously disrupt the Great Lakes ecosystem.”

That’s Marc Gaden with the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. He says there are already a lot of pests in the Lakes.

“There are 180 non-native species in the Great Lakes, many of which came in accidentally. Precisely two of them can be controlled. That’s it. So that’s why biologists and others are very, very concerned about the Asian carp. Once they get in, the cat’s out of the bag.”

Asian Carp were first brought to the states by Southern catfish farmers. The carp escaped the South in the 1990s because of flooding and have been making their way north ever since. These fish are huge. They can grow to four feet and weigh up to 100 pounds, and they reproduce like crazy. In some areas, they reproduce so much that by weight they account for more than 90 percent of the fish in the Mississippi River system.

So you can see why people around the Great Lakes don’t want them.

That’s why Gaden and a lot of other scientists say we should somehow block the man-made canal that connects the big rivers to the Great Lakes for barges carrying cargo.

“We need to be open to saying, just because we’ve been moving goods on the canal by barge for decades and decades, doesn’t mean we need to continue to do it that way. Is there a better way to do it? Can we shift it to rail?”

Gaden and others have been arguing for 15 years to get some kind of permanent barrier built in order to stop invasive species from moving from one ecosystem to another.

“The government agencies that are responsible for doing things on that canal are not moving at the speed of carp, they’re moving at the speed of government. And we don’t have a minute to spare.”

That’s because new DNA tests suggest that Asian carp have moved well beyond the electric barrier meant to keep them out of Lake Michigan.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

Paddling Through Pollution

  • Dredgers, a group that gets together to canoe on the Gowanus, hope that if people see the state of the canal, they'll be inspired to help clean it up (Photo by Samara Freemark)

A group of New Yorkers is trying
to convince people to get out on one of
the most polluted bodies of water in the
country – literally out there, in canoes.
Samara Freemark reports that they hope once
people see the water up close, they’ll
realize just how dirty it is. And maybe
then they’ll help clean it up:

Transcript

A group of New Yorkers is trying to convince people to get out on one of the most
polluted bodies of water in the country- literally out there, in canoes. Samara
Freemark reports that they hope once people see the water up close, they’ll realize
just how dirty it is. And maybe then they’ll help clean it up:

(sound of water, paddling)

You wouldn’t believe the stuff people have pulled out of the Gowanus Canal.
Refrigerators. Bathtubs, rusted cars. A 5000 pound dead whale. A suitcase full of
human body parts. Sewage floods into the canal all the time. So you see everything
people flush down their toilets. The water itself is a sickly, opaque green.

And that’s just the stuff you can see. The canal used to be a dumping ground for the
factories that line it. And the sediment at the bottom is still full of a laundry list of
toxic chemicals: cyanide, mercury, lead, asbestos. Scientists found strains of
gonorrhea in a water sample just last year.

And I’m sitting in a canoe in the middle of it.

(water noise, “Ewww, oh, God, gross. It’s like a subway down here.”)

The Gowanus is a 2 mile long trough of murky water that flows into the New York
Harbor – though the word ‘flowing ‘ is a bit optimistic, since the water mostly just sits
there.

You wouldn’t think anyone would want to canoe in this kind of water – much less
see it as a good way to spend a lazy summer afternoon.

(Laughs.) “ My first day was like, hell no. I knew it was going to be nasty.” (Laughs.)

That’s Alex Kovaleski. She’s a Dredger, a member of a group that gets together to
canoe the Gowanus.

“But I’m always looking for an adventure or a way to see things from a new
perspective, so I went out. And then I started having dreams about it, and it was all
over.”

Kovaleski knew she had to do something.

So almost every summer weekend she and the Dredgers gather at a makeshift pier
and paddle up and down the canal.

They invite others along. Anyone who shows up can jump in a borrowed canoe and
take it for a paddle. They get a lot of first-timers, New Yorkers who have heard about
the trips and come for the novelty or to get a taste of nature in this most urban of
cities.

That’s why Stephen Kline and Beatrice Aranow came. This is their first time at a
Dredgers event. I speak with them on the pier, before they step into a canoe. They
say they came because they love nature, they love being out on the water, and they
want to see their city from a whole new perspective.

Stephen and Beatrice are in for a big surprise. Twenty minutes later, they had their
new perspective.

(talking over each other) “ There were like dead rats, turds. It was a lot worse than I
could have ever imagined. It wasn’t that mysterious. I actually thought I was going
to have a pleasant time going out but it was pretty intense. It was repulsive.”

This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the Dredgers.

But Alex says Stephen and Beatrice’s reaction isn’t that bad – it’s actually kind of the
point.

“Part of it is just being out there with the poop and the trash, like, hah, here it is,
there’s no getting away from it. When you’re in it, you’re naturally longing to see it
restored.”

A week later I came back to the Gowanus canal for another Dredgers event. This
one’s a cleanup day, and volunteers are out with rubber gloves and bags, picking up
trash. It’s kind of a festive scene- there’s music and free pizza. And there’s a group of
high schoolers who came to spend the day canoeing and helping out.

(students talking about canoeing, cleaning)

Alex says those students are who the Dredgers really want to reach. The Gowanus
isn’t going to be clean anytime soon. But those kids are going to grow up, and they’re
going to be tax payers and voters. Soon they’re going to make the decisions that
decide the future of the canal.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Canals Past and Present

  • This is an ocean vessel in the Soo Locks, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The Soo Locks connect Lake Superior and Lake Huron, allowing for ships to travel back and forth. (Photo courtesy of EPA)

One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is the possible
expansion of canals to allow larger ocean-going ships into the lakes. Some see the expansion of
shipping channels as a threat to the environment; others see it as great economic opportunity.
Just like in the early days of settlement, they see the shipping channels on the Great Lakes as
a way to make trade opportunities better.

Transcript

In our next report from the series, “Ten Threats to the Great Lakes,”
Lester Graham brings us a look at shipping on the lakes. Some people think
bigger ships could bring more trade to the region:


One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is the possible
expansion of canals to allow larger ocean-going ships into the lakes. Some see the expansion of
shipping channels as a threat to the environment; others see it as great economic opportunity.
Just like in the early days of settlement, they see the shipping channels on the Great Lakes as
a way to make trade opportunities better.


Native Americans had canoe trade routes on the Great Lakes long before the Europeans appeared
on the scene. When French fur traders arrived, they copied what they saw. They built birch-bark
canoes to travel the lakes and to haul back fur pelts.


(Sound of Saginaw Voyageurs paddling and singing “Alouette, gentile Alouette…”)


Chuck Hoover is with the Saginaw Voyageurs, a group of re-enactors who re-trace the French
Voyageurs routes. Hoover says the large canoes were great until you ran into rapids on the rivers
connecting the lakes.


“What you had to do was pick up everything, including the boat, and carry it across the dry land to
the next place that you could put in water that was navigable.”


Those portages could be as long as seven miles. Carrying a canoe big enough to haul more than a
dozen men and the heavy bundles of fur pelts was a tough job and it slowed trade. So, some small
canals were dug to make passage easier. As the region developed even more valuable natural
resources were discovered. Bigger canals were needed.


Stanley Jacek is an Area Engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the canal and locks
at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. He says by the middle of the 1800s mining around Lake Superior
had become big business.


“Back in those days they discovered iron ore and copper in the upper end of the lakes here. So,
they had to get all that commerce down to the heartland of the country, so locks had to be
built.”


With a canal and locks to help ships negotiate the drop from one lake level to the next, the ore
could be transported to the big steel mills in industrial cities such as Cleveland and Gary, Indiana.


Christopher Gilchrist is with the Great Lakes Historical Society. He says you can’t underestimate
the value of those canals.


“The water-borne transportation was critical for the creation of the industrial age in U.S. history.
There’s a reason why the steel mills are located right on the banks of these Great Lakes. All the major
steel mills were located right by the water so that they could get their raw materials cost
effectively.”


At the other end of the Great Lakes the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in the 1950s to make it
possible for ships on the Atlantic Ocean to enter the lakes, and another big canal and set of
several locks overcame another obstacle to shipping on the Great Lakes – The Niagara Falls.


The Welland canal allows ships to go around Niagara. Since it first opened in the 19th century the
Welland canal and its locks have been enlarged four times. Each time the Welland canal locks
and the St. Lawrence Seaway have been made wider and deeper, the shipping industry builds
bigger and bigger ships to the point that they literally just squeak through…


(Sound of ship squeaking against timbers)


…Often rubbing up against the timbers that act as bumpers on the locks’ concrete walls.


Throughout the history of the canals, there’s been pressure to make them bigger and bigger.
Many feel the amount of shipping through the canals is tied directly to the economic well being
of the nation. The more the canals can handle the better the economy.


(Sound of buzzing, roar of compressor)


Back at Sault Ste. Marie, the locks open to allow another big ship through.


Stanley Jacek, the engineer at the Soo Locks connecting Lakes Superior and Huron says the
economic impact is pretty easy to track.


“What we do here in the way of passing of commerce mimics what’s happening in the country. You
can actually see spikes in the economy by looking at our traffic here.”


But some say the canals could do more than just reflect the health of the economy. They could
spur the economy if even bigger ships could come into the lakes. The ships, the kind carrying
containers ready to be pulled by trucks or loaded on rail cars, could go directly to Great Lakes
ports instead of ports on the East or West coasts. More direct shipping might improve the
region’s economy.


But environmentalists are worried. They say bigger ships from all over the world might mean
more alien invasive species damaging the Great Lakes. The wider, deeper channels might
damage the environment along scenic rivers connecting the lakes, and some believe expanding
the channels will let too much water flow out of the lakes that could worsen the problem of lower
lake levels seen in recent years.


The plans for bigger ships are on hold for right now. But, given the history of the canals, many
believe expansion is only a matter of time.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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