Yet another of the invasive Asian carp species has been found in the Great Lakes.
Commercial fishermen in Lake Erie netted a grass carp earlier this month near Point Pelee.
The carp was just under a metre long and weighed ten kilograms. After catching the carp, the fishermen turned it over to officials of the Ministry of Natural Resources, who sent it to the federal Fisheries and Oceans Canada office and labaratories (DFO) in Burlington Ontario.
While some of the previous carp caught in Lake Erie were sterile, testing by biologists at the DFO lab showed this carp was fertile but while it could spawn, there’s no way to know if it was reproducing.
Jolanta Kowalski, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry says the grass carp is the least damaging of the Asian carp species which also includes silver carp, bighead, and black carp.
She said Ministry of Resources and DFO teams had begun surveillance in the area with a combination of trap netting, gill netting, and electrofishing.
The carp originate in Southeast Asia and all are known to be ravenous eaters. Depending on the particular species the carp consume plankton and/or aquatic vegetation up to 20 percent of their body weight every day. This both depletes food and destroys habitat for native species. They also breed quickly and contain foreign parasites, equally invasive such as the Asian tapeworm.
Another grass carp was found last year also near Point Pelee, while two others along the Canadian shore were found in 2013, and another in 2014. A total of five were found in 2015 near Toronto. Another was pulled from the St Lawrence this past June.
More carp have been found on the US side of Lake Erie and it is suspected they are spawning in the Sandusky River in the US state of Ohio.
At least 45 grass carp were recorded as caught in the Great Lakes basin between 2007 and 2012. Three of the more threatening species, bighead carp, were caught in western Lake Erie between 2000 and 2003.
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