As of last week, the Illinois and Fox rivers were about 16,000 pounds lighter of bighead and silver carp.To reduce the bighead and silver carp population within the Illinois and Fox rivers — which now threatens Lake Michigan — a team from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency in Columbia, Mo., spent several days last week scooping up thousands of the invasive fish out of local water.
“We’re here working with the (Illinois Department of Natural Resources) and the Illinois Fish and Wildlife Services attempting to perform a mass removal of carp,” explained Josey Ridgway, a Fish and Wildlife Agency fish biologist leading the Missouri team.
Ridgway said the crew had a butterfly-frame trawl that uses electricity to shock the water, stunning fish to the surface to be scooped up in huge nets. A tender boat accompanies the trawler during river outings.
The removal results have been worthwhile for the effort, Ridgway said. On Aug. 23, the team collected nearly 16,000 pounds of silver carp, approximately 3,000 individual fish.
“We keep close track of the number of fish, the poundage and manpower used to constantly study and improve our efficiency,” Ridgway said. “It takes a lot of hard work to move that many fish on a daily basis.”
He said any harmless, native fish caught in the nets, estimated at less than 5 percent of the catch, are “quickly released unharmed back into the water.”
Last week’s catches from three days were transported to Morris and stored in a refrigerated truck. The carp eventually will go to a farming operation that will grind the fish for compost fertilizer.
He said the team is scheduled to return to the Illinois and Fox areas four more times — once a month — through December.
Earlier this summer, the IDNR and the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee announced the finding of one silver carp in the Illinois Waterway below T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam, approximately nine miles away from Lake Michigan.
This is the second time a live bighead carp has been found beyond three barriers in the Sanitary and Ship Canal near Romeoville.
Bighead and silver carp are two of the four types of Asian carp threatening the Great Lakes, because they eat the plankton that walleye, perch, whitefish and other native species depend on.
The fish was captured with a gill net by a contracted commercial fisher the morning of June 22 as part of the ACRCC Monitoring Response Work Group’s seasonal intensive monitoring event. The silver carp was 28 inches long and weighed approximately 8 pounds.
The fish was sent to Southern Illinois University and autopsy results showed the silver carp was a 4-year-old male that originated in the Illinois/Middle Mississippi watershed.
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