Word: carp
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...their voracious eating habits weren't enough, silver carp pose a direct threat to boaters. When startled, the fish launch themselves out of the water, turning into 40-lb. (18 kg) projectiles that could easily smash an unwary fisherman's nose. It's enough to turn a fishing trip into something worthy of the X Games, which may be fine for the extreme-angling participants of the wild Redneck Fishing Tournament in Illinois, where silver carp are the target and black eyes sustained from flying fish are a badge of honor. But your average day-tripping sportsman on Lake Michigan...
They're called Asian carp, and they emigrated to the lower reaches of the Mississippi River in the 1970s. Now they're knocking on the door of the Great Lakes, threatening to destroy one of the most valuable aquatic regions in the U.S., unless the often fractious Great Lakes states manage to pull together and keep them out. The situation is so serious that the White House convened an "Asian carp summit" on Monday to work out a defense plan. "If the carp invade the Great Lakes, it will change them forever," says Jennifer Nalbone, director of invasive species...
...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...
...Asian carp are particularly dangerous. Native to China and parts of Southeast Asia, the freshwater fish have been cultivated for aquaculture for more 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...
That's what makes them so dangerous to the lakes. Asian carp aren't direct predators, but they eat plankton, which knocks out the bottom layers of the food chain. If they were to successfully establish themselves in the Great Lakes and start breeding, they could utterly disrupt the existing ecosystem, potentially starving out the trout and other native fish that make the Great Lakes a tourism hot spot. (See 10 species nearing extinction...