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PORT CLINTON — For nearly 30 years, Bob Witt has taken anglers out on his charter boats in search of prized walleye and perch.
Witt and his charter service, Sea Breeze Charters of Carroll Township, have weathered challenges that have hampered the industry through the years — massive algae blooms that occurred in the ’70s and are happening again today and low sport-fish populations, among other issues.
But the biggest threat he has seen to the multimillion-dollar Lake Erie fishing industry is invasive species. And the Asian carp, which is headed up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal toward Lake Michigan, could be the mother of all invasives, wildlife officials said.
“We’ve had the zebra mussels,” Witt said. “We’ve had a lot of things that have come in. People talk about it, but nothing ever seems to get done about it.”
The three types of Asian carp that are nearing the Great Lakes are the bighead carp, silver carp and black carp.
The bighead and silver suck up plankton that sport fish, especially hatchlings, eat. That forces the native species out, said Jeff Tyson, fisheries biologist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Divi-sion of Wildlife Fish Research Station in Sandusky. The invaders also reproduce rapidly, he said.
Couple the voracious appetite with the silver carp’s ability to jump four or five feet out of the water, and the fish present a danger to native fish and pleasure boaters, Tyson said.
The silver carp have hurt boaters on the Mississippi River and tributaries where they have entrenched populations.
The black carp mainly eat snails, which could deplete the snail population, he said.
“If they do get into the Great Lakes, it could be potentially devastating,” Tyson said. “I think they’re significant threats. They’ll get large — they can sometimes exceed 100 pounds.
“They would consume more to maintain body weight than smaller fishes.”
CARP COULD ‘DEVASTATE’ LAKES
Lake Erie, especially the Western Basin, could have the most at stake.
“Lake Erie produces more fish than the other four Great Lakes combined,” said John Hage-man, The Ohio State Uni-versity Stone Laboratory manager. “Most of the fish in Lake Erie are in the Western Basin. It’s the primary spawning area because of all the reefs.
“It has the most food available because of the good algae in the spring.”
The algae, plankton and small organisms the sport fish feed on already are under stress from consumption by zebra mussels, Hageman said. The invasive mussels were introduced to the Great Lakes in the late 1980s and spread rapidly.
The boating industry also could suffer if boaters start running into schools of jumping silver carp. ODNR estimates the impact of recreational boating on the state’s economy is $3.5 billion.
Tourism in Ottawa County and neighboring counties is heavily dependent on the lake, said Larry Fletcher, Ottawa County Visitors Bureau director. Keeping the lake and its fishery healthy have a major impact on attracting visitors, he said.
“I do have confidence in the professionals and biologists working on the issue,” Fletcher said. “That gives me a sense of comfort that they’re working on a solution to this.”
CAN THEY BE STOPPED?
Federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Illinois Department of Resources, are collaborating to control the carp migration.
Asian carp were introduced in the United States in the 1970s to keep retention ponds and wastewater facilities clean. They escaped into the Mississippi in the 1990s when the ponds flooded, then the fish migrated to the Illinois and Missouri rivers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
They could enter Lake Michigan and subsequently the rest of the Great Lakes through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a manmade waterway that connects Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River system. It was opened in 1900 to reverse the flow of the Chicago River and flush sewage and garbage downstream from the city instead of into Lake Michigan.
Today it is used for shipping.
Two electric barriers on the canal create a field that is uncomfortable for fish, meant to keep them from swimming into Lake Michigan. One barrier was closed this month for maintenance, and officials used poisoned carp in the area during the outage.
Last month, officials found DNA evidence the carp have already breached the barrier, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Samples with the DNA were found about 8 miles from Lake Michigan, according to the Corps.
If the carp get into Lake Michigan, they could reach Lake Erie and establish a strong population within a few years, Hageman said. They’ve already become a dominant fish on parts of the Mississippi River and some of its tributaries, he said.
But there is no guarantee the carp would adapt to the Great Lakes.
“That’s the big kicker,” Tyson said. “You don’t know how these things are going to react to a new environment. The potential is there.
“It’s a pretty precarious place to be, hoping that they don’t adjust.”
They are mostly river fish, he said.
The Maumee, which empties into Lake Erie at Toledo, is the largest tributary on all of the Great Lakes.
At this point, there isn’t much the Division of Wildlife can do to stop or prepare for the possible arrival of the carp, Tyson said.
“It’s a wait-and-see thing,” he said.
Hageman feels officials should consider closing the connection between the canal and Lake Michigan until they can find a better solution to keeping the carp out. The shipping industry could find other means, like trains, to move goods, he said.
“But normally, environmental reasons come after economic reasons,” he said.
Asian carp already have been found in Lake Erie, but they have not established a population, Tyson said. There were two confirmed findings of the carp between five and 10 years ago, he said.
Tyson said the fish likely came from markets and were released into the lake.
In a popular Asian custom, a family buys two live fish, eats one and releases the other for good luck, he said. This could be how those fish made their way into Lake Erie, he said.
“I think there’s been extensive education to stop that practice,” he said.