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Rotenone & The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal


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#1 Guest_Uland_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 11:31 AM

Link to original story

Poison to be used in fight against Asian carp
November 16, 2009 By The Associated Press JOHN FLESHER (AP Environmental Writer)

Ill. canal to be poisoned to prevent Asian carp invasion, but Great Lakes remain vulnerable

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Thousands of fish may die when poison is dumped into a canal near Lake Michigan, but it's necessary to prevent an onslaught of Asian carp that could devastate the $7 billion Great Lakes sport fishery, officials said Monday.

Rotenone, a toxin derived from tropical plant roots, will be applied next month to a nearly 6-mile section of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal when an electronic barrier is taken down for maintenance.

The substance poses no danger to humans, although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said people should not eat the fish it kills. Officials said they would use non-lethal electric shock to catch and move as many sport fish as possible before the rotenone is released.

The application "reflects a difficult, but critical team effort to protect the lakes against a destructive fish that could cause catastrophic damage to the Great Lakes ecosystem," said Cameron Davis, a senior adviser to EPA chief Lisa Jackson.

The carp were imported for use at fish farms in the southern U.S. but escaped into the Mississippi River during floods in the 1990s and have migrated north since.

They can reach 4 feet long and more than 100 pounds. They gobble up to 20 percent of their weight daily in plankton, a crucial link in the Great Lakes food chain. With no natural predators, the carp could overrun native commercial and sport fish and soon become the dominant species, scientists say.

Scientists this year detected DNA of silver carp, an Asian species, within a mile of a barrier in the canal about 30 miles south of Lake Michigan.

The barrier gives fish an electric jolt designed to halt their advance and became fully operational in April. It is the more powerful of two that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has placed in the canal in Illinois. A third is scheduled to go online in fall 2010, said Col. Vincent Quarles, commander of the corps' Chicago district.

The newer barrier must be deactivated for maintenance every four to six months. The canal will be treated with rotenone to deter Asian carp from slipping past when it is taken down for several days beginning Dec. 2.

Most of the fish killed will probably be non-sport varieties such as common carp, goldfish and gizzard shad, officials said. They will be retrieved and taken to a landfill.

An antidote will be applied following the treatment to neutralize the rotenone and limit its spread.

Great Lakes advocates reluctantly endorsed the action.

"Nobody wants to see a fish kill, but in this case, the agencies have no choice," said Andy Buchsbaum, regional executive director for the National Wildlife Foundation. "The stakes are so high because it only takes one Asian carp — even one Asian carp egg — to get a foothold in Lake Michigan and then it's all over."

But environmentalists described the electronic barriers and rotenone applications as stopgap measures.

"We're buying an insurance policy that expires again in six months," said Joel Brammeier, acting president of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes.

The only long-term solution is to close or reroute the canal, an artificial link between the Great Lakes and Mississippi basins created by engineers more than a century ago, he said.

Physical barriers also are needed to prevent carp from swimming from the nearby Des Plaines River into the canal during flooding, Brammeier said.

The Army Corps is studying both possibilities, Quarles said. But he said the newer barrier's design was tested in a lab before deployment and proved effective in repelling Asian carp.

"From what we know today, the barriers seem to be effective for what they were designed to do," Quarles said. "We continue to learn and make them better."



#2 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 11:58 AM

A physical barrier, like a decomissioned canal that no longer connects two different ocean draianges? Seems simple that the cost benefit of Great Lakes fisheries, water supply, etc. would grossly outweigh the economics of the canal. What is using the canal, other than sanitary water, that can't be trasnported by rail?

#3 Guest_gzeiger_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 02:58 PM

Army Engineers are still using it for their study - says so right there in the article.

#4 Guest_BTDarters_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 03:39 PM

Huh?? I can't find where it says why they aren't closing the canal.

Brian

#5 Guest_ashtonmj_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 04:22 PM

I was being sarcastic and logical at the same time with the proposal that a true barrier could easily be constructed by just closing the canal.

#6 Guest_BTDarters_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 04:35 PM

I'm all for that idea!

Brian

#7 Guest_panfisherteen_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 06:31 PM

same here, theres no real need for that canal, shut it down before the carp get into the great lakes and start f---ing things up

#8 Guest_Uland_*

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Posted 17 November 2009 - 10:50 PM

I was being sarcastic and logical at the same time


That'll get you nowhere and if you should dare to toss in a bit of practicality...might be blasphemous :smile2:

#9 Guest_gzeiger_*

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Posted 18 November 2009 - 02:06 AM

I'm pretty sure that despite the heavy sarcasm my answer is also strictly true. Feasibility studies* on implementation of common sense are currently underway. No further action will be undertaken until the study confirms the desirability of common sense.

*Federally funded studies, by virtue of the Law of Bureaucracy, will always conclude that further study is necessary. A sober reader of such work will conclude correctly that the authors are such as would be likely to mistake their lower alimentary canal for a bunch of missing dirt.

#10 Guest_nativeplanter_*

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Posted 18 November 2009 - 03:14 PM

*Federally funded studies, by virtue of the Law of Bureaucracy, will always conclude that further study is necessary. A sober reader of such work will conclude correctly that the authors are such as would be likely to mistake their lower alimentary canal for a bunch of missing dirt.


Oh, come on now. The same holds true for any scientific study. When we learn something from a study, it naturally leads to further questions.

Would you rather that people think they have the final answer and know it all? That is a dangerous proposition. I'd rather agencies admit that they don't understand all the intricacies of our environment. Nobody does.

Anyway, can we stay on topic here? The subject is Rotenone in the canal and carp migration...

#11 Guest_Uland_*

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Posted 20 November 2009 - 11:28 AM

http://www.jsonline....n/70573047.html

Asian carp may have breached barrier
By Dan Egan of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Nov. 19, 2009


The decade-old battle to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes might be over.

New research shows the fish likely have made it past the $9 million electric fish barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a source familiar with the situation told the Journal Sentinel late Thursday.

The barrier is considered the last chance to stop the super-sized fish that can upend entire ecosystems, and recent environmental DNA tests showed that the carp had advanced to within a mile of the barrier.

That research backed the federal government into a desperate situation because the barrier must be turned off within a couple of weeks for regular maintenance. The plan is to spend some $1.5 million to temporarily poison the canal so the maintenance work can be done.

But even as those plans are being finalized the news everyone dreaded came: It might be too late.

Now the only thing left standing between the fish and Lake Michigan is a heavily used navigational lock.

Army Corps officials declined to comment on the situation.

"I am not prepared to discuss this today, but I will be prepared to discuss this tomorrow," Col. Vincent Quarles, commander of the Chicago District of the Army Corps of Engineers, said when asked about news that the fish had breached the barrier.

The Army Corps, along with its state and federal partners in the barrier's design and operation, has scheduled a news conference for 10 a.m. Friday.

The fish that can grow to 50 pounds or more are a big deal because they are voracious feeders, overwhelming native species, and they pose a huge hazard to recreational boaters because of their habit of jumping out of the water when agitated by the whir of a boat motor.

No fish have been found, but a new type of DNA testing that can show the presence of fish in the water shows that the barrier does not appear to have worked at stopping all the fish.

"We've got some bad problems," Dan Thomas, president of the Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council, said when told the news.

Thomas said the plan to poison the canal is going to have to grow to cover areas above the barrier, which is about 20 miles downstream from the Lake Michigan shoreline.

"Unless we treat that canal real quick as far up as we can, then we can almost be assured that they're on their way into the lake," he said.

For several years, the northern migration of the silver carp had stalled in a pool just above the Dresden Island Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River southwest of Joliet, Ill. - about 20 miles downstream from the barrier.

In August, the Journal Sentinel learned the environmental DNA testing that biologists had quietly begun using on the canal revealed that the fish had started to move again. It's been all hands on deck ever since.

In addition to plans to poison the river, the Army Corps is scrambling to build a twin to the new barrier. It also is looking at building an emergency berm to prevent the fish from riding floodwaters from the carp-infested Des Plaines River into the canal above the barrier.

The two species of Asian carp threatening to invade Lake Michigan are silver and bighead carp. It's not known which species - or whether both species - have been detected above the barrier with DNA tests.

Silver carp are considered the bigger threat to the economy, ecology and culture of the Great Lakes because of their penchant for leaping out of the water and injuring boaters.

Silver carp were imported to Arkansas in the 1960s where they were used in federally funded sewage treatment experiments.

They escaped their containment ponds soon thereafter and have been swimming north since.



#12 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 20 November 2009 - 04:21 PM

Seems like now would be the time to shut that canal up tight. Like, today. Too bad it won't happen.

#13 Guest_nativeplanter_*

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Posted 20 November 2009 - 05:16 PM

The DNA bit is intriguing. Anybody know how that works?

#14 Guest_BTDarters_*

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Posted 20 November 2009 - 06:06 PM

Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. How do you find DNA without finding a fish???

Brian

#15 Guest_panfisherteen_*

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Posted 20 November 2009 - 09:19 PM

lots of ways, fish crap for one does contain some DNA, there would probably be scales and other stuff too that would hold DNA. This is what i think anyways :rolleyes:

#16 Guest_smilingfrog_*

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Posted 21 November 2009 - 02:03 AM

The DNA bit is intriguing. Anybody know how that works?



I was curious about this too. I noticed in the original article it mentioned them detecting DNA of silver carp.

Link to original story

Scientists this year detected DNA of silver carp, an Asian species, within a mile of a barrier in the canal about 30 miles south of Lake Michigan.


I thought this was a strangely worded statement, and had assumed then that maybe they found part of a dead fish or were testing eggs or newly hatched larvae caught in plankton nets. The second article though, makes it sound like they're testing the water.

#17 Guest_Uland_*

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Posted 21 November 2009 - 09:35 AM

Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. How do you find DNA without finding a fish???

Brian


Apparently they take water samples and filter to process for traces of Silver Carp DNA (that would be excreted from urine, feces or slime).

#18 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 21 November 2009 - 10:36 AM

PCR is a wonderful thing. In a somewhat similar vein, there have been some researchers describing new species entirely from DNA recovered from water samples, without ever seeing the organism itself. Mainly marine picoplankton (bacteria, archaea, and microeukaryotes) so far, but who knows where it could go. I confess that while it is very interesting it makes me vaguely uneasy to describe species from biochemical signatures alone.

http://cat.inist.fr/...cpsidt=16115229

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/15001713

#19 Guest_blakemarkwell_*

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Posted 21 November 2009 - 04:03 PM

Yes, the power of PCR!

Blake

#20 Guest_smilingfrog_*

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Posted 21 November 2009 - 10:45 PM

This made the headlines on AOL today.

http://news.aol.com/...at-lakes/777961

At the end of the article they mention using sterilization to control them if they make it to the lake. :-k How would they pull that off?

Edited by smilingfrog, 21 November 2009 - 11:15 PM.





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