To catch silver carp, Youtube will show you that all you need is a baseball mitt and a boat engine: the engine will startle them so they leap out of the water and into your glove (warning: flying silver carp smack fishers and knock kids into the water).
It’s a homegrown solution, but that’s the state of Michigan’s new approach to the carp invasion: crowdsource solutions from the people.
The Michigan legislature and Gov. Rick Snyder recently allocated $1 million to launch the Invasive Carp Challenge, which introduces crowdsourcing solutions to the carp invasion encroaching on the Great Lakes and bordering states.
Invasive carp already overwhelm Midwestern and Southern rivers, where they represent 70 percent of biomass, and they are swimming upstream to the Great Lakes area, where they will seek out rivers in which they can reproduce and feed.
“What we know about the invasive carp is they prefer riverine systems,” said Joanne Foreman, the invasive species communications coordinator for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “They’ll get into lake systems, but they’ll find warmer waters — that’s where they’ll end up populating and reproducing. They need water flow to lay their eggs, so they’re unlikely to lay in the depths of the lake, preferring shallower river beds.”
The term ‘Asian carp’ encompasses four species: grass, bighead, silver, and black carp. More than 100 years ago, they were introduced to America as food sources, even though they eat 20 percent of their body weight a day in plankton and are starving out local bottom feeders. Of the four threatening species, only grass carp (also known as common carp) populations exist in four of the five Great Lakes, excluding Lake Superior. Foreman said the grass carp come through Lake Erie, since certain states still allow them to be stocked because they are supposed to be infertile. Infertility methods in use, however, are neither long-lasting nor do they consistently work.
Stopping the invasion has brought together states along the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. Currently, the carp-fighting coalition includes the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, the federal government, the Canadian government, and the department of natural resources of Great Lakes state governments.
And now it’s open to the public.
Foreman said the legislature made the decision to open brainstorming to the public because good solutions exist and they might not be within employees of fisheries.
Members in the department are currently picking the right approach to the challenge, in order to get better results than solutions that have already been suggested and tried. She also said the department has yet to determine whether it will award one or multiple prizes for suggested solutions, a decision dependent on categories reflecting the bigger discussion taking place.
She predicts these questions will be answered and the competition ready to launch by mid-summer. She said the challenge will probably last five to six months, leaving enough time for people to come up with the ideas, connect with other problem solvers, and seek out guidance from experts through Innocentive.
In the meantime, however, self-proclaimed avid fishermen and “old geezers” like Ted LoPresto are worried about birds and boats accidentally introducing bighead, silver, and black carp eggs and babies from the Mississippi River into Michigan’s lakes and rivers.
LoPresto, a past chairman of Michigan’s third district of united conservation clubs, said the carp pose a huge threat to the state’s industries: multimillion dollar businesses will go down the drain if nothing is done about the carp, especially Michigan charter fishing businesses.
Foreman agrees. The lasting impact of an invasion in Michigan wouldn’t be the lakes, but rivers, backwater areas, and smaller inland recreational lakes.
“Look at a detailed river map of Michigan,” Foreman said. “With the watershed connectivity to lakes, they can go anywhere.”
