The black carp is the last of the four “Chinese polyculture fishes” to be caught from the wild. The other three are bighead, silver, and grass carp, all of which are well-established in the US and causing us all kind of problems. Until last week, only one black carp had ever been caught from the wild, and it was triploid and sterile. Last week a fisherman reported that he has been irregularly catching “odd-looking grass carp” for 8 years in the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana. (That River connects by canal to the Mississippi, if I am not mistaken). A state biologist asked him to call him next time he caught one. It didn’t take a week. I’ve seen the pictures and it is definately a black carp. We don’t know yet if this fish was a sterile triploid or not, but if they truly being caught regularly, then the carp may be out of the bag.
Every aquatic organism that has been brought in to this country for production-scale aquaculture has escaped to the wild. When will we ever learn.
April 26, 2004 at 9:12 pm
#1244240
No easy task sometimes 