Interview: Big, Nasty Fish

  • Some biologists worry the Asian Carp will destroy the four-billion dollar fishing industry in the Great Lakes if it gets in. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

There is a man-made canal that connects
the Mississippi River system with the Great
Lakes. The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal
makes shipping cargo between the waterways
possible. It also makes it possible for invasive
pests in the water to invade both systems.
The big concern right now is a big, nasty group
of fish known as Asian Carp that’s already
invaded the Mississippi and some of its
tributaries. An electric barrier has been built
in the canal to try to stop the fish from getting
into the Great Lakes. Lester Graham talked with
Jennifer Nalbone about the problem. She’s the
Director of Navigation and Invasive Species with
the environmental group Great Lakes United:

Transcript

There is a man-made canal that connects
the Mississippi River system with the Great
Lakes. The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal
makes shipping cargo between the waterways
possible. It also makes it possible for invasive
pests in the water to invade both systems.
The big concern right now is a big, nasty group
of fish known as Asian Carp that’s already
invaded the Mississippi and some of its
tributaries. An electric barrier has been built
in the canal to try to stop the fish from getting
into the Great Lakes. Lester Graham talked with
Jennifer Nalbone about the problem. She’s the
Director of Navigation and Invasive Species with
the environmental group Great Lakes United:

Jennifer Nalbone: They are just incredible eaters, and they get as big as 3 to 4 feet, 80 to100 pounds when mature. And they are just prolific. Some species, the females can produce over 1 million eggs in their lifetime. So the fear is, like they’ve done in the Mississippi River Basin, they’ll get so big, they’ll have no predators, they’ll eat so much food, and there’ll be so many that they’ll basically take over the ecosystem. In some areas, where they’ve invaded, upwards of 90% of the river’s biomass is carp.

Lester Graham: You’ve probably seen this fish on videos or something like that – they’re the ones that as a boat passes by, they’ll jump out of the river, and sometimes even hit the boaters.

Nalbone: I admit, the first time I saw a video of the jumping silver carp, I was so startled I laughed at it. But there’s nothing funny about 50, 60, 70 pounds of fish flying at you when you’re going 20 miles an hour. It could kill someone.

Graham: Now, there’s this electric barrier in place that actually shocks the water so the fish is discouraged from coming into the area. But now there’s concern that the fish has invaded a nearby river, the Des Planes River, that’s very close to this canal. So, why’s that a problem?

Nalbone: Our concern is with flooding. Just last year, we saw major floodwaters in the Des Planes River, where floodwaters connected the Des Planes and the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal in streams of water several feet deep. And carp could be carried into the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal in those floodwaters.

Graham: So, what are you proposing? How could we stop the fish from going any further?

Nalbone: Well, the long-term solution is hydrologic separation of the Mississippi River Basin and the Great Lakes Basin. Army Corps of Engineers has been authorized to study that problem, but that’s a multi-year project. Right now, what we’re concerned about are floodwaters this fall. We are pressing that the Army Corps of Engineers put in place sandbags or berms in the low points between the Des Planes and the Canal. And also fill in some of the culverts in the IMN Canal that connect to the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal.

Graham: Now, I’ve watched this situation for years – long before the Asian Carp invaded the Mississippi River system – and I’m wondering, even if further millions of dollars are spent, to try to put up barricades or stop this fish, whether it’s simply inevitable that this fish will get into the Great Lakes.

Nalbone: Well, this is a battle against time right now. If we can block the future floodwaters from the Des Planes – which is probably our biggest hole in our defense right now – and plug the culverts in the IMN, we can buy ourselves some good time. But we won’t be out of the woods until we separate the Mississippi and the Great Lakes Basin. But we can’t let this invasion happen. It would be, perhaps, the greatest anticipated ecological tragedy of our time. So, I don’t think that inevitable is an option. We have to get it done.

Graham: Jennifer Nalbone is with the group Great Lakes United. Thanks, Jennifer.

Nalbone: Thank you, Lester.

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Sea Squirts Sucking Up Species

  • A colony of tunicates in Guam (Photo by David Burdick, courtesy of NOAA)

Slimy, hungry invaders are moving through
the waters off the Northwest coast of the US.
They’re called invasive tunicates –
or sea squirts. And they’re the same invasive
species that devastated shellfish farms on Canada’s
east coast. If invasive tunicates aren’t controlled,
you could see a lot of seafood options disappear
from markets and menus. Ann Dornfeld has the story:

Transcript

Slimy, hungry invaders are moving through
the waters off the Northwest coast of the US.
They’re called invasive tunicates –
or sea squirts. And they’re the same invasive
species that devastated shellfish farms on Canada’s
east coast. If invasive tunicates aren’t controlled,
you could see a lot of seafood options disappear
from markets and menus. Ann Dornfeld has the story:

It’s a peaceful spring morning at this suburban marina. But beneath the water’s surface, a hunt is
underway.

(water sounds)

Professional divers – like Jesse Schultz with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife – are
combing the docks for invasive tunicates. They don’t have to look far.

“That’s one of the tunicates right there – that’s the guy right there.”

Schultz surfaces holding a jelly-like tube. Sea squirts compete with everything from clams to tube
worms for the plankton they all eat. The sea squirts usually win, because they don’t have native
predators. Three species came here from Asia, probably on boat hulls. Today, divers are cleaning
the hulls of local boats to keep the sea squirts from spreading.

Allen Pleus manages invasive species for the state.

“The whole intent right now is a containment action. We want to prevent any of these boats
from leaving this harbor with the tunicates attached to their bottom, going to another
harbor, and infesting that harbor or marina.”

When invasive tunicates get to a new harbor, they quickly become the dominant species. In the
warm part of the year, they spawn every 24 hours. And along with hogging the food supply, one
species of sea squirts forms a slimy mat that smothers mussels and other shellfish.

Pleus says if tunicates get out of hand, they could make a big impact on the seafood industry.

“It can definitely affect especially shellfishing in this area. Puget Sound, Western Washington is one of
the largest producers of shellfish in the nation. It could also affect other populations of
food fish, including salmon, by taking out a lot of the nutrients that juvenile salmon feed
on.”

Nova Scotia learned that lesson the hard way. Pleus says in Eastern Canada, entire shellfish
farms were recently wiped out by invasive tunicates.

“So the rap sheet is clear. They can grow to exponential sizes, quantities and smother
aquaculture facilities. They can’t even lift up their lines it’s so heavy with these critters on
it.”

To prevent the same thing from happening here, the state workers have to move quickly – and
they have to be thorough.

“Here’s another bag, Justin!” (splashing sound)

Back in the water, diving biologist Jesse Schultz has his hands full with a boat that has apparently
been docked for seven years. Its tabs show that’s the last time it was registered.

“This guy’s getting a free boat cleaning, sort of!”

The state is trying to scrape clean every infested boat in Puget Sound before the summer boating
season. But Schultz says because the docks are still covered with invasive tunicates, they’ll grow
back on this boat if the owner doesn’t keep it clean.

“That’s the biggest thing these guys can do to keep these things from spreading is have
their boats maintained.”

The state is still figuring out the best way to clean the docks. So far biologists have cleaned only
one entirely. When they were done, they’d removed ten tons of critters.

Unfortunately, Allen Pleus says only some of those were tunicates. In order to get rid of the
invasive sea squirts, they have to employ a sort of scorched earth policy.

“That is one of the hardest parts of this is that we have to basically take everything out.”

That means the good with the bad. We sift through a bucket of the creatures scraped from the
dock. Along with plenty of invasive tunicates, there are brightly colored sea cucumbers, scallops,
mussels, rock oysters, feather duster worms and chitons – exactly the kinds of animals the state
is trying to protect. They have to destroy the habitat in order to try to save it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Man vs. Beast

  • Where is it?! Oh! There it is - up in the corner - eeek! (Photo by Tom Wojnowski)

More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:

Transcript

More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:


Get this: woodpeckers want to live inside Tom Wojnowski’s house.


“There’s a hole. And when you’re in house here’s what you hear, you hear this: (knocks) and you know you’re being attacked!”


Wojnowski is not so keen on sharing his house with the woodpeckers. He managed to scare that one away, but then another woodpecker made a pretty good-sized hole on the other side of the house.


Wojnowski put up one of those menacing plastic owls, you know, to scare the woodpecker away – and he thinks it’s working. He’ll probably even buy another plastic owl. You know, with those cute eyes, all wide.


Wojnowski lives in a suburb, but it’s sort of out in the country. There are dirt roads, and lots of trees. And lots of wildlife in the area.


Wojnowski started having problems with animals pretty much the day they moved into the house. Actually, he can list off his problems to the ABCs.


“Well let’s start with A. Ants haven’t been a big problem. There’s been a few but none in the house and they’re out there so I leave them alone. B. You have bees and bats.”

Ok, this could go on for a while… so I’m going to jump in here.

Bats were living in the attic. Carpenter bees chewed holes in the siding. So, for “D” you’ve got deer. The deer ate pretty much all the landscaped plants. Ok so now, let’s jump to “F.”


There was this fox. It had been living in Wojnowski’s drainage ditch. And it would bury its kill in the lawn—things like dead, smelly skunks. Yeah.

So, one day Wojnowski was getting his mail and the fox came strolling out of woods. And they locked eyes.


Wojnowski noticed the fox was small and red… and beautiful.

But he was tired of dealing with it.


“So I took this rock and I put it in front of the drainage ditch hole. And he watched me do that and it was almost like ‘what are you doing to me here?’ So then he went next door and went to their drainage ditch.”

Wojnowski is not the only guy who’s battling it out with the wildlife.


As people keep moving into areas near wildlife, there are problems. I mean at a certain point it starts to feel like…(Boxing announcer: in this corner, with acres of ravaged lawns and gardens to their credit, we have the wildlife. (applause and boos) And in this corner, with a hoe, live traps, and a BB gun, we have the human homeowners…” (applause and boos and the ‘ding’ of the boxing bell)


But experts say it does not actually have to be ‘us’ versus ‘them’.

Jennifer Kleitch is a wildlife technician with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.


She says people need to realize that they’re part of the problem.


Dog food outside is a free meal for coyotes. People who mow their lawns all the way to the edge of their pond create paradise for geese: short grass near water.


And then there’s this kind of thing which can happen with raccoons:


“If we leave out our garbage and they get into it, we get mad and they’re being a nuisance. But we are in essence responsible for them being there and being drawn to it.”


She says people tend look at it as if animals are the problem. But… the people moved into the animals’ neighborhood.


Stephen Vantassel says we’re conflicted about wildlife. He’s a wildlife damage educator with the University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension office.


“We tend to have the Disney effect with wildlife. We have these rather pastoral images of a person walking through a deep forest and seeing the deer in the distance. And then that attitude can change dramatically when they see that same deer ravaging a plant they paid $500 for to have put in their backyard.”


He says when people start thinking of wildlife as “evil” (As in, “that thing that tore up my flower bed is ‘evil’”) well, that can be bad.


The animals are not the enemy… they’re part of the environment… the same environment that people want to live in.


So… Tom Wojnowski? You know, the ABC guy?


Well, he says his perspective has changed a little over time. He still thinks if animals are destroying his property… yeah, well then they’ve got to go. But he’s starting to realize there are things he can do to discourage wildlife from damaging his property… without waging war.


He’s kind of getting into it actually. He’s started reading up on different animals. He says he likes and respects animals… even the mole tearing up his lawn. He thought it was a whole colony. Turned out… it was just one mole. But one heck of a hard-working mole.

Experts say there are plenty of cheap, simple things you can do just to prevent problems.

Like modify bird feeders to guard against squirrels. Chimney caps discourage uninvited guests from dropping in. And people can fill in the cracks and crevices around their home to stop things like bees and mice from sneaking in.

But the experts say that the best thing you can do is cool your jets. Stop viewing the animal as the problem. And realize that the animal is just trying to do its thing.

As for the wildlife around Tom Wojnowski’s place, well, they’re stalled at the letter W. Which is the first letter in his last name. The animals are still trying to learn to live with him.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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