Rotenone & The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal

I really do not think they will survive very well in Lake Michigan. They might gain a small foot hold here and there around river mouths and Urbanized areas but will not find a happy place to survive in most of the Lake. It is going to take them a bit to jump from oasis to oasis in that big desert of a lake.. Most of Huron will be pretty uninhabitable to them also with the exception of some localized areas. Most main Rivers on the Lake Michigan side also have several barriers to prevent them moving very far up stream.

Now When (I do not pretend if) they get into Lake St. Clair and Erie we are really screwed...It is perfect grounds for them here. My only hope is the Musky find them easy to catch and utilize. Much like the Walleye and Smallmouth bass have figured out the Round goby.

Unfortunately, and I'd hate this to be true but know deep down it is, these things are going to make it into the Great lakes. No simple electric barrier is going to keep them out. We can delay them but they are going to get in and get through. I'm not really even sure closing the canal or poisoning it will stop this... it again is only a delay.

Gosh, I hope you're wrong!

Brian

I really do not think they will survive very well in Lake Michigan. They might gain a small foot hold here and there around river mouths and Urbanized areas but will not find a happy place to survive in most of the Lake. It is going to take them a bit to jump from oasis to oasis in that big desert of a lake.. Most of Huron will be pretty uninhabitable to them also with the exception of some localized areas. Most main Rivers on the Lake Michigan side also have several barriers to prevent them moving very far up stream.

I don't know much about any of the great lakes. Why would Lake Michigan be inhospitable to carp? I assume it is something about their particular needs and the habitat of the lake, but am curious to know what it is.

I don't know much about any of the great lakes. Why would Lake Michigan be inhospitable to carp? I assume it is something about their particular needs and the habitat of the lake, but am curious to know what it is.

Lake Michigan is not really a very productive lake outside of some River mouths and in areas where fertilizer, Sewage and Storm drain runoff is an issue, Bighead and Silver carp are adapted to rich waters with abundant microzooplankton and phytoplankton on which to feed. It would be a tough time for these fish in this Lake. I'm sure they will and could colonize some areas with higher nutrient concentration, But other areas are just big dead zones to them.

The lakes are very sterile and the carp need very fertile waters. Lake Superior will probably never have a problem with them, even if we dumped tons of them into it.
Brook is right though, in St. Clair and Western Erie it would be a disaster.

Edited by TheCoggster, 23 November 2009 - 07:13 PM.

The rotenone was dispensed and now our fears have been confirmed last night....Silver carp are past the barrier and no doubt in the great lakes.
It's funny how we've spent millions on this electric barrier that has failed when for far less cost we could have simply filled in a small section of the canal.

The rotenone was dispensed and now our fears have been confirmed last night....Silver carp are past the barrier and no doubt in the great lakes.
It's funny how we've spent millions on this electric barrier that has failed when for far less cost we could have simply filled in a small section of the canal.

Well you know Uland... As much as I hate to say it. I told you so.. It has been suspected they are already there and if they where not they would be within a year. All I can hope is they find Lake Michigan inhospitable enough or a barrier of it's own to not make it over here. With some luck, the tune up on the Electric barrier (and this Fish kill) will at least add something to reducing the source population to one that can not form a founding colony. Me... I'm pessimistic on that one.

I agree that Lake Michigan will not welcome Silver Carp but they will find a suitable River in a year or two.
I am terribly pessimistic about control of the source population though. Silver Carp made it to the barrier last year so I suspect there are a great many have made it past and will successfully populate every hospitable water in short order.

This will change how boats and recreational watercraft are designed and future generations will look at old boats (without 1/2" thick, high safety shields) and think how funny they look.

The rotenone was dispensed and now our fears have been confirmed last night....Silver carp are past the barrier and no doubt in the great lakes.

Uland, can you elaborate a bit more, perhaps with a link to a good story? A few people I work with have been trying to keep up with the news on this.

Fox News has an interview posted with USGS about the Chicago Canal Rotenone project.

http://video.foxnews...re-are-the-carp

Uland, can you elaborate a bit more, perhaps with a link to a good story? A few people I work with have been trying to keep up with the news on this.

I'm afraid I can't seem to find a "good" story since the local media are now taking the angle "we've spent all this money to kill a single carp".
I can elaborate a bit more though. They administered the rotenone above the barrier and began a seemingly large scale shocking/netting campaign which did yield a single Silver Carp (above the barrier) proudly displayed to cameras in time for the evening news. They will continue to net fish that have succumbed to the rotenone in following days.

Just to be clear..I am not in the know or close to the events surrounding the barrier or the fish kill.

I see. So we are certain that a carp was found ABOVE the barrier- I couldn't find anything that explicitly said that. From the map I saw it looked like the rotenone was release AT the barrier, and flowed downstream from there.

Depressing news indeed. Too bad the media is missing the point here. If you do find something intelligent, I'd love to see it.

(ScenicRivers - Alas, I can not watch videos here at work. And my home computer doesn't have a sound card. Too bad there isn't a transcript.)

EDIT: Are we certain that the one carp was above the barrier? Everything I have found implies that it was found below the barrier...

at least they managed to knock out some of those darn cammon carp

Several states have joined a lawsuit to close the waterway at least temporarily. I believe MN, OH, MI and now IN are asking the locks be closed.

Ontario is too (supporting those states)

Ontario is too (supporting those states)

Good deal!

Link to AP story


By JOHN FLESHER, AP Environmental Writer John Flesher, Ap Environmental Writer – Mon Mar 29, 4:25 pm ET

An initial six-week mission to catch and kill Asian carp lurking on the Great Lakes' doorstep turned up none of the despised fish, suggesting few if any have eluded an electric barrier designed to block their path to Lake Michigan, officials said Monday.

Beginning in mid-February, teams of biologists and commercial fishermen combed a network of Chicago-area rivers and canals where Asian carp DNA has been detected in numerous spots over the past year. They spread netting across large areas and used electric stunning prods where they believed the carp were most likely to gather, said Chris McCloud, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The operation yielded more than 1,000 common carp, a similar number of gizzard shad and a few other varieties but no silver or bighead carp — natives of Asia that have infested sections of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers plus the Chicago waterways south of the electric barrier, some 25 miles from Lake Michigan.

"What this tell us is if they are present above the barrier, they are in very low numbers as we've said before," McCloud said.

The barrier's effectiveness is a key issue in the debate over whether to close shipping locks in the waterways to keep the invasive carp from entering Lake Michigan, as sport fishing interests and most states along the Great Lakes would like.

Notoriously prolific, Asian carp can grow as large as 4 feet long and 100 pounds and eat up to 40 percent of their body weight daily in plankton, the base of the lakes' food chain. Scientists say that if the species spreads across the lakes, it could damage the $7 billion fishing industry.

Recreational boating also could suffer. Silver carp are known to become startled by motors, leaping from the water and colliding with boaters.

Illinois and the Obama administration oppose closing the locks, siding with Chicago barge and tour boat companies who say doing so would devastate their businesses. They contend the electric barrier is performing well and closing the leak-prone locks wouldn't be a foolproof measure.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused for a second time Michigan's request to order the locks closed.

The sampling operation was conducted by the Illinois DNR, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Their crews set more than 5 miles of netting in the main channels of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the Des Plaines River and other waterways, plus barge slips, marinas and other likely carp hideouts.

Early on, the teams focused on areas where warm water was being discharged from industrial operations, including power plants and wastewater treatment plants. Fish tend to congregate near warmer water during winter. As spring approached and ice receded, the search area was broadened.

To make sure they were using effective techniques, the crews also searched for Asian carp below the electric barrier. They nabbed 36 silver carp and four bighead carp near Starved Rock Lock and Dam, about 70 miles downstream.

Ashley Spratt, a spokeswoman for the fish and wildlife service, acknowledged the failure to catch any Asian carp above the barrier didn't necessarily mean none were there.

"They are hard to catch and this is a big area we're looking at," she said.

John Sellek, a spokesman for Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, said Monday that although no Asian carp were found, Michigan still wants the locks closed.

"What did they expect? (Illinois') own court filings say they are not likely to catch Asian carp using nets or electro-fishing," Sellek said.

Biologists plan to continue searching over the next three months as part of a $78.5 million Asian carp control strategy.

"Intensifying our sampling and monitoring efforts in high-risk areas for Asian carp provides us with critical data on population dynamics, potential range expansion and movement of the species," said Charlie Wooley, deputy regional director for the fish and wildlife service.

Illinois and the Obama administration oppose closing the locks, siding with Chicago barge and tour boat companies who say doing so would devastate their businesses.

It always amazes me at how preserving jobs is used as an argument against halting even the most environmentally destructive practices. If you had a guy whose entire job was carrying buckets of toxic sludge and dumping them in a river, seems you could find some politicians who would argue against stopping the practice to save the job...

Biologists plan to continue searching over the next three months as part of a $78.5 million Asian carp control strategy.

There's already so much money being thrown around on this issue in the barriers, studies, lawsuits, etc. -- can't they figure out a way to just block the canal and fairly compensate the businesses that would be adversely affected?

The truth is that operating canals at any cost is a 19th-century industrial practice. Shifting bulk freight to railroads is at most slightly more expensive, and much less environmentally destructive (especially since the rail network was completed a long time ago).

I'm not familiar with this canal system, and wanted to get an idea of what exactly we're talking about. This page and map is the best I've found yet describing what the barriers are and where they are placed: http://www.lrc.usace...s/fish_barrier/ . I was picturing this as being somewhat closer to Lake Michigan and downtown Chicago than it actually is.

Does anyone know of better maps showing where the carp are now, what area they treated with rotenone, where the carp DNA has been found, etc?

Also, anyone seen descriptions of the type/volume of traffic we're actually talking about? I keep seeing tour boats and barges mentioned, but haven't seen details on what is actually being transported via this route. What kind of tour boats are operating there?