Finally! Common Sense Aproach to Asian Carp

  • Brian Klawitter
    Keymaster
    Minnesota/Wisconsin Mississippi River
    Posts: 59992
    #1708133

    Granted the acoustic transmitters and receivers are fairly new to MN but I’m happy to see we aren’t closing locks or spending millions of dollars for bubblers, electric fences and other which craft.
    Personally, after seeing some of the sturgeon and catfish tracking results I believe the following will pay off big time for slowing the spread to AC.

    Only time will tell.

    For Immediate Release:

    Aug. 3, 2017

    DNR tagging invasive carp for first time

    Legislature gave DNR authority to use new research tool

    The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has captured a bighead carp and, for the first time in the state, tagged it to learn more about invasive carp.

    After a period of acoustic telemetry tracking to learn more about its range and other behaviors, the tagged invasive carp will be removed from the water and euthanized. The data will increase the DNR’s ability to capture invasive carp when they enter Minnesota waters.

    “This new tool is another proactive step Minnesota is taking to prevent the spread of invasive species,” DNR invasive fish coordinator Nick Frohnauer said. “The more we can learn about these species, the more effectively we can continue to minimize their potential impact, with the help of Minnesotans who use rivers for business or recreation.”

    Friday, the DNR captured a 37-pound, 43-inch bighead carp in the St. Croix River, surgically implanted a thin, 4-inch long tracking tag and returned the fish to the river. Daily tracking by boat has shown the fish’s precise range, feeding areas and other details about the types of conditions these species prefer.

    The DNR won’t know some things about this fish, such as whether it’s an egg-bearing female, until after they recapture, euthanize and examine it.

    The Minnesota Legislature granted the agency the authority to use tagging as a research tool. Legislative approval was needed because the agency is putting an invasive species back into the water for a period of weeks.

    “It’s important and legally required, as always, that anyone who catches a bighead, grass or silver carp in Minnesota contact the DNR immediately,” Frohnauer said. “Invasive carp are rare in Minnesota, with typically just a few individual fish reported in the state each year. We can keep it that way with the public’s help, more research and continued vigilance.”

    The DNR is permitted to track up to two invasive carp in the St. Croix or Mississippi River at any given time. Anyone who catches a bighead, grass or silver carp must report it to the DNR immediately. Call 651-587-2781 or email [email protected]. Take a photo and transport the carp to the nearest fisheries office or make arrangements for it to be picked up by a DNR official.

    The DNR has been preparing for the opportunity to tag and track invasive carp. Last summer, DNR fisheries biologists John Waters and Joel Stiras successfully tested the technique on a bigmouth buffalo, a native river fish similar in habits to invasive carp. They netted the fish in Pool 2 of the Mississippi near Inver Grove Heights and implanted it with an acoustic transmitter. After releasing the fish, they tracked it for several days and re-captured it in a backwater area near Cottage Grove.

    The DNR is working with other state and federal agencies, conservation groups, university researchers and commercial businesses to prevent the spread of invasive carp. Efforts include ongoing monitoring, evaluation of deterrents at Mississippi River locks and dams, and sharing of research and information. This tagging project would not be possible without an extensive Mississippi River telemetry receiver network put in place by the DNR, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

    Invasive carp have been progressing upstream since the 1970s, when they escaped into the Mississippi River from southern fish farms, where they were used to control algae. These large fish compete with native species and pose a threat to rivers and lakes. While no breeding populations have been detected in Minnesota waters, individual bighead and silver carp have been caught in the Mississippi, St. Croix and Minnesota rivers.

    More information about invasive carp is available at http://www.mndnr.gov/invasivecarp.

    Dave maze
    Isanti
    Posts: 980
    #1708164

    (The DNR is permitted to track up to two invasive carp in the St. Croix or Mississippi River at any given time.) Why only two? Who makes up those rules? Seems like a fail.

    munchy
    NULL
    Posts: 4931
    #1708183

    I wonder why they don’t sterilize the fish before release?

    grubson
    Harris, Somewhere in VNP
    Posts: 1616
    #1708186

    (The DNR is permitted to track up to two invasive carp in the St. Croix or Mississippi River at any given time.) Why only two? Who makes up those rules? Seems like a fail.

    X2.
    It doesn’t make much sense to me.
    Why not study and track as many as possible? I think it will be hard to get any good info from just two fish.

    grubson
    Harris, Somewhere in VNP
    Posts: 1616
    #1708187

    I think releasing the tagged fish to study it will do more harm than if they just killed them on sight.

    jon amundson
    Posts: 143
    #1708198

    I agree.I shure hope they steralize them first. The tracking could help understand the species habits in colder water up here.

    dfresh
    Fridley, MN
    Posts: 3053
    #1708202

    I think releasing the tagged fish to study it will do more harm than if they just killed them on sight.

    I think any amount of data collected on this fish far outweighs the gain from killing it. If you get info that leads to controlling or killing anything from 2+ fish, it is a net gain.

    blackbay
    mn
    Posts: 872
    #1708204

    I think releasing the tagged fish to study it will do more harm than if they just killed them on sight.

    How so? By tracking these fish the DNR can see if these few are full time residents or transient fish that travel up and down the river. Also the U of MN did something similar and used the common carp they tracked to find more and remove them from metro lakes. BTW sterilizing fish isn’t like spaying or neutering a dog.

    grubson
    Harris, Somewhere in VNP
    Posts: 1616
    #1708222

    They are a destructive invasive specie that WILL cause negative effects to our rivers and lakes. In my opinion that’s about all we need to know.
    I think stopping them before they establish breeding populations should be priory #1. Releasing fish that I’m assuming with their limited numbers (right now) are fairly difficult to capture could be sinking the proverbial knife.
    I’m not claiming at all to be an expert just providing another perspective. I say study the millions of fish down south, they will be easier to find (literally jump in the boat). Meanwhile they should catch and kill as many of them as possible up here.
    If we wait too long chasing GPS tagged fish up here it will been too late.

    Brian Klawitter
    Keymaster
    Minnesota/Wisconsin Mississippi River
    Posts: 59992
    #1708223

    Well I certainly wasn’t expecting to see these types of comments when I came back.

    When a law is written (without any if’s and’s or but’s), no one is allowed to break the law no matter if it’s in the name of science.

    The DNR will need to track these TWO fish manually if they don’t swim by a reciever and will need to find them to take them back out of the water. Some of you must be aware the Mississippi River is…ummm BIG?

    I’m just guessing they know what their limitations are and may have thought this through before moving ahead with it.

    Doing a bit of research on Asian Carp you’ll find the carp need more then two fish and certain conditions to reproduce. Last time I had time to check they felt they needed a uninterrupted river at least 14 miles long for the fertilized eggs to hatch, with a slough or slack water pool at the end for them to grow.

    Now I haven’t been keeping up on the new studies our DNR and other States have been doing over the years but this sure seems like the BEST plan of study I’ve heard of.

    Of course my arm chair doesn’t say biologist either.

    munchy
    NULL
    Posts: 4931
    #1708226

    They are a destructive invasive specie that WILL cause negative effects to our rivers and lakes. In my opinion that’s about all we need to know.
    I think stopping them before they establish breeding populations should be priory #1. Releasing fish that I’m assuming with their limited numbers (right now) are fairly difficult to capture could be sinking the proverbial knife.
    I’m not claiming at all to be an expert just providing another perspective. I say study the millions of fish down south, they will be easier to find (literally jump in the boat). Meanwhile they should catch and kill as many of them as possible up here.
    If we wait too long chasing GPS tagged fish up here it will been too late.

    However those GPS tagged fish could lead us to a previously unknown breeding population. They have already said they were able to recapture the test fish. They may as well attempt to study a few fish, just wish they could sterilize them beforehand -just incase-

    Brian Klawitter
    Keymaster
    Minnesota/Wisconsin Mississippi River
    Posts: 59992
    #1708228

    I say study the millions of fish down south, they will be easier to find (literally jump in the boat). Meanwhile they should catch and kill as many of them as possible up here.

    Don’t take this personally Grubson it’s not meant to call you out but the easiest quote to grab that echoes others above.

    It is the law that Asian Carp (all the flavors) can not be returned to the waters and need to be called into the DNR. Says that in the news release.

    The Illinois River where the Silver Carp are jumping (and picts are used in every damn AC ad ever filmed) is, well in IL. They are trying a number of money holes down there. The electric barrier for one. Great idea…not! The folks I’ve talked to that live or fish the Mississippi parallel to the IL River tell me they have a hard time finding silver carp in the Mississippi. I didn’t say they can’t..just saying they have a hard time.

    How does a person track a million fish? How does a person get 500 acoustic transmitters?

    Brian Klawitter
    Keymaster
    Minnesota/Wisconsin Mississippi River
    Posts: 59992
    #1708229

    <block quote>just wish they could sterilize them beforehand -just incase-

    I know this was talked about at one time. I’ll see if I can get more details on why they aren’t going that route over the weekend.

    bioguy
    Posts: 128
    #1708282

    They’ve used this tech to track and target large schools of carp for commercial netting. They did this on a frozen lake a few years back since the carp roam around in big schools during the winter. Used the tracking device to find the school then a remote submarine robot to drag a giant net around the school. Pulled up something like 80% of the carp in the lake in one shot.

    http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/01/16/a-new-tool-targeting-asian-carp/

    Brian Klawitter
    Keymaster
    Minnesota/Wisconsin Mississippi River
    Posts: 59992
    #1708291

    Thanks for that link bioguy!

    munchy
    NULL
    Posts: 4931
    #1708295

    <block quote>just wish they could sterilize them beforehand -just incase-

    I know this was talked about at one time. I’ll see if I can get more details on why they aren’t going that route over the weekend.

    In the story bioguy linked to.

    “An effective and sound way to sterilize Asian carp for release has yet to be developed.”

    jstiras
    Posts: 88
    #1708324

    I will try to answer these questions as best as I can.

    We didn’t sterilize the fish for two reasons.
    1. It is an incredibly involved effort to sterilize an adult bighead carp. The U of MN brought in a vet to work on invasive carp and after removing the gonads in an extensive surgical process, the darn thing grew the gonads back.
    2. If it was even possible to sterilize the fish, there is the question of whether or not a sterile fish behaves the same as a fertile fish. Know thy enemy. Don’t know thy modified enemy.

    We also discussed partnering with USGS and stocking triploid (sterile) invasive carp and tracking them (has been done on grass carp for years, recently developed for bighead and silver carp). However, some people (and this extends beyond the MNDNR) did not like the idea of stocking them, even if they were sterile. Also, see #2 above.

    We stand to learn a great deal from this fish. Our permit is limited to implanting two fish at a time simply because it is a starting point. I wanted to do this four years ago but we had to convince some people it was necessary. When we finally did that, turned out it was illegal for even us to release them. We will track this fish, learn about it’s preferred habitat, and target it for recapture, which could very likely lead us to more (which will be REMOVED). We have a handful of spots where we have captured these things, so we know we can go back to those spots (and we do) time and time again to try and catch more. We have no idea if the areas where we have caught them in the past are actually important and preferred habitats, or if we just happen to catch them because that is where our efforts are focused.

    Last thing. Releasing one or two fish will not doom us all to them suddenly spawning. There are more fish out there, and those are the ones we want to find. This fish will lead us to them. We have been seeing bighead carp in the St Croix since 2003 and they have yet to have sufficient numbers of fish up here to successfully spawn and recruit a year class. It took a long time for them to have enough fish above Lock and Dam #19 to successfully spawn. We’ve got some time before that critical mass is reached, and we are going to do our best to prevent the invasive carp from ever hitting that critical mass.

    That is all I can type out at the moment. We are headed out right now to go locate it again.

    Joel

    Brian Klawitter
    Keymaster
    Minnesota/Wisconsin Mississippi River
    Posts: 59992
    #1708334

    Joel as you might tell, has been working on tagging, tracking a number of species in the Mississippi and St Croix Rivers for some time now.

    Here’s his info:
    Joel Stiras
    Fisheries Specialist
    East Metro Fisheries
    1200 Warner Road
    St. Paul, MN 55106-6793

    He might be the most boots on the ground person we have in tracking fish in MN.

    Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge Joel!

    munchy
    NULL
    Posts: 4931
    #1708337

    Great info Joel! Thanks! Please keep us updated.

    CaptainMusky
    Posts: 22823
    #1708338

    I think its a brilliant idea and too bad it took so long to get it going. Its one of those things though. Hopefully it leads them to answers. If there is a breeding population, round em up. If not, great news, for now at least.

    Tuma
    Inactive
    Farmington, MN
    Posts: 1403
    #1708347

    Only 2 fish to study is not much. But at least it is a start and wish it would have started years ago. Joel I appreciate your efforts and wish you the best luck. At least with 2 fish being tracked we will learn something.

    huntinforfish
    Posts: 114
    #1708400

    Great information. I’d like to know who needed convincing to start a project like this. I’d also like to know if Joel and others were hindered in there quest for approval by outdated laws and/or certain legislators and what the reasons. Budgetary? Ideals? Lack of knowledge? Protecting fisheries is something we all care about. If we can help by making some calls or via other methods, it would be great to know where to start.

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