Yet another snakehead, this time in VA

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=174-05102004

Snakehead

ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — A second northern snakehead has been caught by a fisherman in the Potomac River, Maryland officials said, a sign that the destructive alien species may have invaded the Washington area’s largest river.

A snakehead was caught in a lake near D.C. earlier this year.
By Leslie Kossoff, AP

The 12-inch immature female was found in the river Wednesday just south of Fort Washington by an angler who turned it over the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The agency confirmed that the fish was a northern snakehead, a nonnative species imported from China.

The discovery comes nearly a week after a fisherman caught a similar sized snakehead May 7 in a small tidal creek near Mount Vernon, Va., just across the river from Fort Washington.

That has led state environmental officials to worry that the voracious fish that can destroy an ecosystem and live out of water may be spawning in the Potomac.

“Two fish, same size, same area. It makes you start to wonder about the origin,” said Steve Early of DNR’s fisheries division. “Our concern ratchets up.”

One snakehead was caught in a Wheaton lake earlier this year and thousands were discovered in a Crofton pond in 2002. The Wheaton lake was drained and declared snakehead free while the Crofton pond was poisoned to kill the fish.

But it would be impossible to use those kind of control methods in the Potomac, a large river that forms the border between Virginia and Maryland and flows into the Chesapeake Bay.

Early urged fishermen to watch out for snakeheads in the area. He said anglers should kill the fish by freezing it or clubbing it and then alert DNR. The agency planned to place signs at all access points within a 10 mile radius of Marshall Hall, the point on the river where the fish was caught.

“It was at least inhabited by two (snakeheads),” he said. “We want to find out if it is inhabited by more.”

He said state officials are unsure if the two fish were released independently of each other or if there is a reproducing population of the fish in the Potomac. DNR believes the fish found on the Maryland side was hatched in 2003.

Native to China, snakeheads are voracious predators, sitting on the top of the food chain and devouring smaller fish. They are considered a delicacy in some Asian countries, and were often sold in Asian markets or kept in tanks by collectors. They are harmless to humans.

In 2002, the Department of the Interior banned the import of 28 species of snakehead, including the northern variety. Those who owned snakeheads before that time could keep their fish but were barred from transporting them across state lines, he said.

After the Wheaton discovery, Montgomery County drafted its own law making it illegal to possess a nothern snakehead.