Word: amur
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...other fish. Delicious to eat, it would also be such a powerful jumper and swimmer that sportsmen would revere its ability as a fighter. As an extra benefit, this paragon would feast on something that nobody wants. Does such a fish exist? Indeed, yes. It is called the white amur (Ctenopharyngodon idella), a member of the carp family that is native to eastern Asia, where it is prized as a delicacy. Three feet in length and 70 lbs. in weight, an adult amur just loves to eat-so much, in fact, that it is said to consume old shoes...
Enter the white amur, which operates like a biological vacuum cleaner, eating up to four times its own weight in algae every day. In 1963 the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries imported some amurs from Malaysia, later turned 70 of them over to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission for study. Outlets were carefully blocked with wire mesh to prevent any from escaping. Still, accidents will happen, and last spring Arkansas biologists found a few white amurs in the White River, a tributary of the Mississippi. Since eight years of research had disclosed no faults in the amur...
Many imported fish-most notably the Asian walking catfish in Florida and the European carp in all states -have adapted so successfully to U.S. waters that they have crowded out valuable indigenous species. Other scientists fear that the amur could conceivably eat a lake's entire supply of vegetation and thus trigger a serious new kind of ecological imbalance. But, says Collins, "if we thought the amur was a monster, we wouldn't stock...