Word: bighead
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Asian carp - a collection of related fish, including bighead carp and silver carp - are what's known as an invasive species, an animal or plant that moves into a new environment, often badly disrupting it. Invasive species are becoming more common because of international trade, which turns the planet into a giant pinball machine, transplanting wildlife from one corner of the world to another, and because of climate change, which prompts species to migrate to more hospitable environments, often at the expense of those that already live there...
...than 1,000 years, often raised in submerged rice paddies. Catfish farmers in the U.S. imported Asian carp decades ago to eat up the algae in their ponds; the fish slowly escaped into the wild and have been making their way up the Mississippi River. They are eating machines; bighead carp can grow incredibly quickly and reproduce rapidly as well. "They just eat so much," says David Ullrich, executive director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. "They're like the locusts of the river...
...escaping and competing with or consuming native fish, or cross-breeding with them and diluting the genes that have helped them survive. Fish escapes are common: nets are ripped open by predators or storms, fish in ponds get swept into channels by rainfall, others are released accidentally during transport. Bighead and silver carp that were introduced to China's plateau lakes in the 1950s have cleared those waters of whole species of indigenous fish. And Asian carp, which were introduced in Mississippi Delta catfish ponds to control parasites, escaped in the early 1990s and have migrated up the Mississippi...
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