THE GREAT LAKES WATER WARS by Peter Annin

Preventing a Hostile Takeover: Asian Carp + the Great Lakes

Lawmakers seek emergency steps to halt Asian carp


(AP) --  Members of Congress are demanding emergency action to prevent Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes and devastating their $7 billion fishery.

House as Thesis

Varient Ecologies Paradigm Map

Mapping of three separate theses references to formulate a relevance to each other. By placing each of our references upon a grid map against the extremes of “urban and rural”, and also “natural and artificial”, we begin to see where our particular projects situate themselves. We add connections to where our individual references relate. The bold topics relate to other heading bubbles within the color range of the individual thesis. Blue represents the Urban Ecologies of Aquatic Processes, my thesis topic. 

House as Thesis Demo Set

Mo. biologists try to control Asian carp numbers

http://www.necn.com/10/29/10/Mo-biologists-try-to-control-Asian-carp-/landing_scitech.html?&blockID=3&apID=7c52ea8b574e4d7bb0ec48b55ce9e3df

Oct 29, 2010 4:00am

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The fish tank at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Columbia Environmental Research Center looked like it held a swirling black cloud. A school of juvenile Asian carp was clustered together and rapidly rotating from the outside of the school to the inside.

“They hate to be alone,” said Robin Calfee, a USGS biologist who studies the carp.

The carp were acting like this because they were frightened; people were standing over their tank. One of the fish had released a chemical signal known as an “alarm cue,” and the others reacted accordingly. The group clustered together to protect itself from a potential predator.

USGS biologists want to take advantage of this behavior. In groundbreaking research, Columbia-based scientists are looking at ways to use the carp’s alarm pheromones, attraction pheromones or commercial bait scents to control the movement of carp populations that have taken over many Midwest waterways. They believe this research might hold the key to preventing the invasive species from spreading farther.

“The idea would be to keep them away from something like the entrance to the Great Lakes,” said Duane Chapman, a USGS research fish biologist. “Also, we have very few” accessible “backwaters in the Missouri River, so we could use it to keep fish out of backwaters where juveniles would grow.”

The two species of Asian carp — bighead and silver — have thrived for decades in Missouri and surrounding states. The fish are indigenous to the fresh waters of eastern Asia and were first brought here in the 1970s to be stocked in aquaculture ponds and sewage treatment lagoons. People viewed the carp as a natural way to control plankton growth.

But the fish escaped and today can be found in most large flowing waterways in the Mississippi River basin. Overall, they have been reported in 18 states nationwide, and their high fecundity rate — females produce hundreds of thousands of eggs each — and the lack of natural predators have led to a population explosion.

Efforts to control the carp have not succeeded. Illinois, for instance, has instituted an aggressive fishing program, and in 2006, fishermen on the Illinois River caught 2.3 million pounds of carp, more than two-thirds of the total catch that year. In subsequent years, the catch has been much higher, but officials have seen little to no drop in overall numbers.

“It’s an uncontrolled experiment,” said Rob Maher of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, “because we don’t know how many fish would be out there if these guys hadn’t started harvesting. It doesn’t appear to have collapsed the population. The Asian carp are alive and doing very well.”

The invasive carp appear to be driving out several native species such as the big mouth buffalo and gizzard shad, according to published research. Anecdotal evidence from fishermen indicates walleye and sauger are scarcer and smaller then they once were along the Illinois River.

Matters have become so urgent that five states are suing the city of Chicago in federal court to close a 78-mile network of natural and manmade channels known as the Chicago Area Waterway System in an effort to prevent the carp from entering Lake Michigan. Chapman testified recently at the hearing for more than three hours.

The carp have not yet established themselves in any of Missouri’s large lakes, but Chapman said if they do, the effect could be devastating.

“My prediction is that if these fish get into Truman Reservoir or Lake of the Ozarks and are able to establish large populations, that would be very bad,” Chapman said, “and probably would have drastic effects on the numbers of crappie and walleye.”

In this environment, research now under way by Calfee and Ecology Branch Chief Ed Little at the USGS CERC laboratories at 4200 E. New Haven Road could have a major impact. The researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of using alarm pheromones or “schreckstoff” to control Asian carp. In experiments, Calfee has taken a live carp and made incisions with a scalpel to simulate the attack of a predator. She then lets the fish sit in a tub of water for a short time and then extracts the water to release it into the tank. She said the response is almost immediate: The carp will exhibit heightened swimming in a school formation and attempt to quickly escape.

“Once a fish is attacked, the cells in the epidermis are broken and release these alarm cues,” Calfee said. “They kind of send out a signal to the rest of the school that, ‘Oh, there’s a predator here; we better swim away.’”

Calfee and Little also are working with sex pheromones and with commercially available baits in flavors such as fruit, Irish cream and squid and liver to determine what works best to attract carp.

Little said the team will collaborate with Peter Sorensen of the University of Minnesota, who has already identified and documented 260 chemical substances in the pheromones of the common carp. The researchers will monitor which pheromones produce the greatest response.

“Hopefully, we’ll come up with a magic cocktail,” Little said.

___

Information from: Columbia Daily Tribune, http://www.columbiatribune.com

Ohio state rep seeks to strengthen fight?

An article regarding the threat of Asian carp reaching the Lake Erie Shoreline.

Political with the upcoming elections. Debbie Stabenow U.S. Senator (D., Mi) lauds the Army Corps of Engineers for completing the barrier fence along 13 miles of the Des Plains River.

toledoblade.com -- The Blade ~ Toledo Ohio

More fencing erected!

Associated Press

11:47 a.m. CDT, October 29, 2010

CHICAGO — A wire mesh fence is now up between the Des Plaines River and a shipping canal in an effort to keep the invasive Asian carp out of the river in the event of flooding. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, environmental agencies and lawmakers marked the completion of the 13-mile-long barrier on Friday. 

Asian Carp Threaten Lake Erie Too!

They've installed a fence almost 1,200 feet long in an Indian Marsh. The fence is 8 feet tall and made of chain-link fencing. It was completed Tuesday October 19, 2010 at Eagle Marsh near Fort Wayne. It is bolstered by about 120 concrete barriers. It's designed to prevent adult carp from using the northwestern Indiana marsh to swim from the Wabash River system into the Maumee River and then onto Lake Erie during floods. Biologists fear that if the carp reach the Great Lakes they could destroy it's $7 billion/yr fishing industry by starving out native species.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS October 21, 2010, 11:09AM ET
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9J05F701.htm

Site as Thesis
Map of the site of where the Asian Carp is approaching the Lake Michigan shoreline. This is not the final draft of the Map. It will continue to be added to and become a palimpsest of information layered by time.

Urban Ecologies of Aquatic Processes

 I’m concerned with the invasive species of Silver Carp that is on the threshold of arriving to the Lake Michigan shoreline. This includes the events that led to this.

In the 1830’s, the State of Illinois decided that in order to preserve the city of Chicago’s fresh water supply they would have to re-route the river systems from dumping into Lake Michigan. By January of 1900, the first River was reversed and connected to the Mississippi River by a series of Control Locks. Within a few more years, two more rivers were reversed and connect to the Mississippi. This has opened a shipping channel that now connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi that generates $1.7 Billion/year. This is also allowing the silver carp and other invasive species a direct access to the Great Lakes and threatens the $7 Billion/year fishing and tourism industry of the Great Lake region.

I am situating a thesis within the ecological urbanism of aquaculture to explore a solution for the invasive fish dilemma and also to look into strategies for wastewater treatment and handling. Political issues will be noted and explored as assets or hindrances.

Artifacts to be explored are methods of representing water, aquatic systems, political agents, and the urban.

What is Aquatic Ecology?

Aquatic

–adjective 

1.

of, in, or pertaining to water.

2.

living or growing in water: aquatic plant life.

3.

taking place or practiced on or in water: aquatic sports.

Ecology

–noun

1.

the branch of biology dealing with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment, including other organisms.

2.

Also called human ecology. the branch of sociology concerned with the spacing and interdependence of people and institutions.

http://dictionary.reference.com

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I'm now live and running. This blog will be a forum of thoughts and ideas to generate discourse on design and general life. Today's initial thought is...What if the Hokey Pokey is really what it's all about?